


Crimson Vision

by phoenixyfriend



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Dark, Canon meets, Chloé Bourgeois Redemption, F/F, F/M, Gen, Lesbian Chloé Bourgeois, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Can't Swear, Multi, Please don't dismiss this as some grimdark disaster I promise it gets funny soon, Therapy, Time Shenanigans, merging timelines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:36:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24550132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: Marinette's life wasn't perfect, but it was pretty close. Sure, she had some bad days, but her biggest problems were annoying classmates and some chronic sleep deprivation. Also Hawk Moth, but Hawk Moth was everyone's problem. So one bad day wasn't really supposed to change much, right? It was just a bad day.Except it wasn'tjusta bad day. Whether the bad day had anything to do with what happened was up in the air—the only person who would probably knowthatwas Bunnyx—but it was still supposed to be a bad day and nothing more.It wasn't supposed to be the kind of day that led to an older version of herself that was scarier than most akuma.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Kagami Tsurugi, Chloé Bourgeois & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 51
Kudos: 155





	1. A Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

> I promise this is going somewhere. Mostly somewhere weird. But definitely somewhere.  
> (It's also going to get funnier. First chapter is just setup.)

“Are you _kidding_ me?” Bunnyx hisses, trying to force apart two of the portals in her burrow. They don’t budge, and she rather wants to punch something. She’s not fizzling out of existence, so it’s not the _worst_ situation she’s been in, but it’s still _really fucking bad._ “No! Stop that!”

The burrow portals inch closer, and Bunnyx tries again to push a hand through and maybe _enter_ one, but the image flickers and zaps her.

It’s solid, and electrified, and keeping her from going in.

Almost all of her portals are doing that, and the few that aren’t are set to the distant past.

“Come on!” She yells, and it does nothing.

Son of a _bitch._

\--

Marinette woke up late. This wasn’t new, just worse than usual. A middle-of-the-night Akumatization usually meant school was delayed by two hours, or even cancelled if it was a bad one. It wasn’t really enough for Marinette to feel awake, since that time was intended for civilians to catch on lost sleep, not for superheroes to recover from exhausting fights. Still, it left her _functional,_ usually.

But today was not a day for sleeping in, because today was a day for field trips.

Field trips that left the school at 7:45 AM sharp, and weren’t waiting for _anyone_ who missed the bus out of town.

(Well, maybe Chloé, but even that was up in the air since Miraculous Queen. Daddy’s influence could only do so much when everyone…)

(No, that was too mean, even about Chloé.)

So Marinette skidded to a stop in front of the school, already well aware that she was way, way too late for the trip. It was 8:34.

Tears pricked at her eyes, and she rubbed at them. It wouldn’t do to get upset. She’d just—see if she could follow them out. Somehow. She couldn’t legally take the bakery’s van until she was eighteen, and her bike wasn’t fast enough. Going as Ladybug was—was a bad idea, and—and—

She clenched her jaw, willing herself not to cry. It was just a field trip. These things happened. It wasn’t the end of the world, no matter how bad the sleep deprivation had her frustration spiraling.

She just had to figure something out.

Marinette dug out her phone and texted Alya an update, fiercely struggling against the traitor tears that _weren’t going away, darn it!_

She needed a solution, not emotions that were going to get Hawk Moth trying to take advantage of her.

Her phone rang.

“Hey girl!” Alya said, voice bright and cheery. “So, I have some good news for you—”

“Unless it involves time travel, I don’t think it’s going to help,” Marinette groaned.

“Wait, are you crying?”

“No. Kind of. Just tell me you can fix this.”

“You’re not the only one who missed the bus,” Alya said. “Adrien’s only about five minutes out, so he’s asking his driver to swing by the school and pick you up.”

“Oh my god,” Marinette said, the tears not _quite_ tearing up, but definitely a little better. “Oh my god, Alya, you’re a lifesaver.”

“Uh, I know,” Alya said, smug and delighted. “And thank Adrien, too! He’s going to be there in a minute. Try not to lose your words again, okay?”

The line clicked off before Marinette could answer. She stared at the wall, not even noticing the little black butterfly that had been flapping its way towards her.

Marinette sat down heavily on the steps of the school, rubbing at her eyes to get rid of the remaining wetness. Tikki poked her head out of her bag. “Well, that went better than expected!”

“Y-yeah,” Marinette said, sniffling. “I just—it’s been a long day. Night. Week? It’s been a lot.”

“I know,” Tikki said, flitting up to press herself to Marinette’s collarbone, hidden behind the flaps of the jacket Marinette had chosen for the day. “But it worked out! And _now,_ you get to spend time with _Adrien!”_

Marinette groaned and per her face in her hands. “Oh no no no no no, I’m going to make _such_ a fool of myself!”

“You can do it, Marinette! You like him a lot, but he’s just a boy, you know, and you’re Ladybug! Talking to Adrien can’t be harder than fighting Volpina or Style Queen or anyone else Hawk Moth sends at you!”

Marinette made a face. “But I _know_ how to fight akumas, and I’ve done it a lot! I’ve only talked to Adrien a few times without doing something silly.”

“You have to learn how _sometime,_ Marinette,” Tikki scolded. “And now’s a great time to do it! You’ve talked to him before, even alone a few times. Like the last time you were in his car!”

“You mean when he told me he was in love with someone else?” Marinette asked quietly.

Tikki pouted. “Just because he doesn’t want to date you doesn’t mean you should give up on being his friend or think about it every time you see him. I know it takes time for humans to get over a broken heart, but—”

**_“COME BACK HERE, BEAUFORT. THINK YOU CAN JUST LEAVE ME ON READ, DO YOU?”_ **

Marinette was on her feet in a second, conversation all but forgotten. Adrien’s car was still nowhere to be seen, but there were people on the street, already running.

Marinette dove behind the curve of the stairs and a luckily-placed hedge. “Tikki, Spots On!”

And so Ladybug dove into battle.

\--

The fight lasted for the better part of an hour, and when Ladybug finally got a chance to transform back into Marinette, her phone was blowing up with texts from her classmates asking if she was alright. Marinette lied through her teeth—well, fingers—and said that she thought the akuma might have been jamming signals, since her whole thing was being left on Read. She assured them that she was fine, just in time for Adrien’s car to pull up.

“Hey.”

“Adrien!” Marinette jumped to her feet, standing stiff and straight. “Hi! Um, I thought you would have been halfway to the caves by now. You didn’t have to come back for me!”

“Oh, it’s no trouble,” Adrien said, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “We actually got stranded by the attack, so it’s not like I was going anywhere anyway. We’re still going to be late, but—”

He broke off with a massive yawn, and then grimaced as Marinette giggled. “Sorry about that. Couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Me neither,” Marinette admitted. “So! Um, we should—we should get going, right?”

“Right.”

\--

The field trip was a disaster. Not because of any akuma, but because of Lila managing to annoy the tour guide into begging for a replacement after repeatedly trying to explain her own (nonexistent) connection to the paintings, talking over the guide in a way that nobody except the guide and Mlle Bustier seemed to realize was a problem. Well, actually, Adrien seemed to notice, and Chloé was glaring at a wall or rolling her eyes most of the time, but the rest of the class was completely buying into whatever Lila said.

Marinette resigned herself to fuming quietly in the background and trying not to give people anything to work with insofar as “Marinette is so jealous of Lila for getting close to Adrien!”

(She’d been nice to Kagami, and _Kagami_ had a solid chance with Adrien, right? And Marinette was trying to move on and sort of… feeling things out with Luka. But even with that evidence, they were accusing her of just being jealous, not of—of—)

 _(Breathe, Marinette,_ she told herself.)

_(Breathe.)_

“—brina, come on, you can’t _actually_ believe her.”

Chloé?

“Why not?”

“Remember when she said she saved Jagged Stone’s kitten?”

“Yeah…”

“What kind of pet does Jagged Stone have?”

“…an alligator, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t _used_ to have a kitten, Chloé.”

“Yeah, so I asked him. His room is right next to mine. He’s _never_ had a kitten, Sabrina.”

“Why do you care so much? Is—is this that thing you said you were supposed to stop doing, with the ‘tearing people down to—’”

Chloé slapped a hand over Sabrina’s mouth, looking around frantically, and met Marinette’s eyes. She glared, but the telltale fear was there, even if nobody else seemed to notice.

A hand landed on Marinette’s shoulder, and she looked up to find Adrien, staring calmly back at the girl that had made Marinette’s school life a pain for almost four years now. He mimed pulling a zipper across his lips, and then looked down at Marinette.

Her heart thudding—Adrien’s hand was on her shoulder!—she looked back to Chloé and nodded sharply, and then did the same zipper-across-the-lips motion.

Chloé didn’t relax, but she did pull her hand away from Sabrina’s mouth. Her face was red, and she looked more hunted than embarrassed, and she stalked away. Sabrina shot them a quick, pained look, and darted after her.

“She’s still not over Miracle Queen?” Marinette asked quietly. “I mean, if anyone would know…”

“She hasn’t talked about it much,” Adrien said. He looked uncomfortable, when she glanced up at him. “I don’t really feel like it’s something I should be sharing. Her private business, you know?”

Marinette nodded.

The week Chloé had taken off had been bad. The rumors of a short but pitched court battle—one which Ladybug had been obligated to make an appearance at, because underage or not, Chloé had been caught on _multiple_ cameras agreeing to work with Hawkmoth and then trying to go back to him after losing—had been bad. The twitchy, panicked spite? Bad.

Chloé was just as mean as ever, but there was an edge of desperation to it now.

It hurt to see, even on someone Marinette hated.

(No one had actually been told the verdict, not even Ladybug and Chat Noir. All anyone knew was that there _had_ been consequences, just… not public ones.)

Then Marinette realized that Adrien was still standing next to her, and their arms were touching, and she turned red.

Never mind that they’d spent an hour and change in a car this morning, of course. No way her anxious, lovestruck brain could even begin to comprehend that maybe, _maybe,_ Adrien was just a friend and a classmate that Marinette could have normal, reasonable conversations with and _not_ make a fool of herself.

“Er, I—I think I should—”

“Adrien!”

Marinette couldn’t help the face she made. In her defense, Adrien was _also_ making a face.

“Hello, Lila. Please let go of my arm.”

“Did you hear what the tour guide said?” Lila chirruped, wrapping her hands a little tighter around Adrien’s bicep. “She said—”

“Lila, he told you to let go,” Marinette interrupted.

“Oh, come on, Adrien doesn’t really mind, do you?”

Adrien didn’t meet her eyes, just stared straight ahead with a look that was best described as “quietly suffering and resigned.”

“Actually, Adrien and I were having a conversation,” Marinette said. “And he _did_ ask you to let go. So you should probably do that.”

Lila leaned towards Marinette, pressing herself closer to Adrien in the process. “Maybe you shouldn’t get involved in things that you’re not part of, _Marinette.”_

Marinette stepped closer, crowding Lila and trying to draw up the kind of confidence she carried as Ladybug, the kind that didn’t just stand out, but _commanded._

Lila seemed unimpressed.

“Excuse me.”

“Mme. Bustier!” Marinette jumped back, heart racing. She’d been so focused on Lila that she hadn’t even heard the teacher coming up. That wasn’t a good thing. “Er, is there a problem?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out,” she said, smiling in a way that only mostly reached her eyes. “Someone pointed out that Adrien looked a little uncomfortable and that you girls aren’t on friendly terms, so I was hoping I could make sure to head off any trouble before it happened.”

“Nothing’s wrong, Mme. Bustier!” Lila affirmed. “We’re just chatting!”

“Adrien asked Lila to let go of his arm but she won’t,” Marinette said.

“Oh, come on, I’m just being friendly,” Lila insisted. “Adrien and I get along great, and—”

Mme. Bustier held up a hand. “Adrien, are you comfortable with Lila touching you?”

Adrien grimaced. “It’s—it’s not a big deal, and…”

He trailed off.

“Lila, I think it would be best if you came and stood with me for the rest of the trip,” Mme. Bustier said, tone and expression gentle. “Marinette, Adrien, why don’t you go check out the gift shop?”

Lila scowled at Marinette as Mme. Bustier led her away, but Adrien sighed in relief and smiled at Marinette. “Thanks. I don’t think she really knows how to take no for an answer on some stuff. She sees Chloé do things like that, and thinks it’s fine…”

“I don’t think that’s why she does it…” Marinette grumbled. “I mean, you’ve known Chloé since you were kids, right? Totally different.”

“Practically since diapers,” Adrien confirmed. “And Chloé and I have _talked_ about boundaries, you know. Lila doesn’t… get that.”

“I think she just doesn’t care,” Marinette told him. “She’s—”

“I know,” Adrien said. “I—I know. Can we not talk about it?”

Marinette winced and looked at the floor, fingers tangling together as the anxiety came back. “Sure. Um… gift shop! Right, she said we should check out the gift shop.”

She turned and started walking, thankfully in the right direction, ramrod stiff.

(Now if only she could have _kept_ talking to him normally…)

\--

The ride back was by bus, and Marinette sat by Alya this time. Sitting with Alya was comfortable, and normal, and fun. Marinette almost would have felt like the ride went great, if not for how Lila had taken the seat behind her and spent the entire ride kicking Marinette’s seat and blaming her ‘restless leg syndrome.’

She didn’t even look _happy_ about torturing Marinette, like she usually did. She just looked mad.

> **From: Alya  
>  **Yikes. What did you do to get her mad at you?
> 
> **From: Marinette  
>  **told her to stop harassing adrien basically
> 
> **From: Alya  
>  **did you actually say ‘harass’ or???
> 
> **From: Marinette  
>  **No! i just told her that if adrien asked her to not touch him, which he did, she should listen  
>  then mme bustier showed up and told her to move  
>  and i guess shes blaming me
> 
> **From: Alya**  
>  rough  
>  wish we could talk about this out loud but can’t do that without fake fox there hearing us

Marinette bit her lip, wondering if it would be worth it to press Alya and pretend to be curious about why Alya took such offense to Volpina’s existence, just so she could step back and figure out how to plan for the question when someone who _didn’t_ know Rena Rouge’s identity asked—which didn’t matter as much as it once had, since Hawk Moth had found out—instead of possibly outing her identity more than it already had been.

(It all came down to luck, honestly, and Marinette wasn’t even sure _whose_ luck. It might have even just been magic. Chloé’s crimes had been made… not _public_ , largely because she was fifteen, but caught on camera, enough that charges had to be pressed on order of the federal government, something even the Mayor couldn’t sweep under the rug—the rest of the heroes’ identities hadn’t. Hawk Moth knew, and so Mayura did by extension, but anybody else?)

(The team themselves didn’t know, due to Miracle Queen’s actions.)

(The court had asked Chloé if she would be willing to give up those identities. Ladybug had even been in the room, had almost shot to her feet and yelled _How dare you?!_ before Chloé sniffed and said that she didn’t remember, _obviously.)_

(It hadn’t rung true, not for Ladybug and not for anyone else, but Chloé had stuck by her story no matter how hard the investigators and lawyers and media pressed.)

_(“Do you actually remember?”)_

_(“…too many glasses,” she’d said, not meeting Ladybug’s eyes. “I wouldn’t want to be on a team with so many losers anyway.”)_

And then people were screaming, and Lila was cackling, and the bus was coming to a screeching halt.

Apparently, “two kilometers past Melun” was close enough to reach with an akuma.

So, yeah. Lila was still mad.

It was time for some screaming, and pushing, and evacuating the bus, and hearing that fun little yell of **_“What’s wrong, Miss Dupain-Cheng? Don’t tell me your scared of a few hugs?”_**

Marinette looked back over her shoulder as she ran, and doubted that hugs were the _only_ thing Lila was dispensing. The girl had a penchant for getting akumatized in ways nobody expected, with powers that nobody wanted to—yep, there it was. Some kind of time-space manipulation.

Marinette was way, way too tired for this.

“Spots on!”

\--

“You know,” Chat said, after the fight was over, watching the class fuss over Lila below, “I wonder what got her to so angry that ‘putting people into tiny pocket dimensions so they had no choice but to touch each other’ made sense as a theme for her powers.”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Ladybug lied. She knew exactly what had happened. Lila had more than brought it on herself.

“Maybe it’s—” Chat cut off with a yawn, and Ladybug couldn’t stop herself from doing the same.

He offered her a wry grin, barely glancing at his watch when it beeped. “Had any coffee yet?”

“Some,” she answered with a grimace. “Mostly I just need a _nap.”_

“We could sue Hawk Moth for teenager abuse,” Chat offered.

“Ha.” Ladybug said flatly. She shook her head. “I need to get going. See you tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, m’lady!” he said, offering her a jaunty salute and springing away with the aid of his baton. Ladybug snorted and slid down the tiled roof, dropping into an empty alleyway and letting go of the transformation.

The fatigue hit her like a sledgehammer, and with it came the soul-deep emotional exhaustion that crept in like an unwelcome old friend on days like this. She could feel the tears pricking at her eyes already.

She made her way back to the class, made her excuses, and made an attempt to sleep.

It didn’t really work.

\--

She couldn’t sleep.

The world was against her, probably, and Tikki didn’t have any answers. Marinette was exhausted and, to be dramatic, a little bit dying inside, and she couldn’t even sleep it off. She was full of the restless kind of energy that came with tension and a tiny bit of anger aimed at the world, the kind of energy that came in the wee hours and kept a person up and pacing because it was at least better than lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and trying not to cry.

“Spots on.”

The fatigue faded a bit, but the energy didn’t. Marinette hopped up onto her balcony, gazed upon the sleeping city, and started swinging. The lights didn’t glitter below her—height laws made it hard to get the kind of air that would let her see Paris the way she could have if she’d gone to a city littered with skyscrapers, like New York or Tokyo or Hong Kong—but she could see the sleepy calm of her home. It made her smile, knowing that once Hawk Moth was gone, Paris would go back to what it was meant to be: _peaceful._

She patrolled, moving more to move than to actually pay attention to the world around her, only faintly distracted by the low music of a late-night bar and the distant siren of a firetruck rushing its way through a suburb.

It settled her. Not much. Not for long. But it helped…

And then it came back, all at once, and even Tikki’s power wasn’t enough to cover the sudden crushing anger and pain and _depression._

It was so _stupid._ She couldn’t afford these emotions, not really, and it would have all gone away if she’d just been able to _sleep._ It was just—she was overwhelmed, she was _tired,_ she was so done with having to split her time five different ways and not having a support network for the direction that took the most out of her.

Chat was probably asleep.

Ladybug landed in the thin alley between two restaurants, the kind of narrow strip that wasn’t meant for anything more than bringing out garbage from behind the building. She leaned back against the brick wall and breathed. She tried to think of good things—her dad was going to teach her a new recipe tomorrow. She’d spent an hour in the car with Adrien and mostly managed to talk to him without saying something dumb. Alya was still suspicious of Lila after the suspension incident. Jagged Stone had approved of her new album cover design. Nino’s birthday was coming up and she’d figured out the perfect gift.

It didn’t help. In frustration, she hit the wall behind her, and froze as she heard it crack.

Ladybug lowered her head, eyes wide, and stared at the small crater and pulverized bricks she’d caused.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “I didn’t just—no, no, no, can I Lucky Charm this? Can I—would it be fixed by the next wave? It was technically caused by a Miraculous, not…”

Frantically, she attempted to push the little bits of broken bricks on the ground back into place. Unsurprisingly, they fell right back out.

Ladybug stared helplessly at the hole in the wall, and pulled up her yoyo. Was it worth trying to Lucky Charm the situation? Would it have been better to detransform and ask Tikki?

Was… was she supposed to pay for repairs? She didn’t make an income as Ladybug. She wasn’t even sixteen yet.

She’d broken a _wall._

Chat wouldn’t be able to answer if he wasn’t transformed, and he was probably asleep, so…

Something dark and indistinct fluttered across her vision, like a small horde of beetles or ants or another small dark cloud of things she couldn’t make out, because there wasn’t exactly a lot of light in the back of an alleyway.

She shielded her face, eyes squeezed shut, and… nothing.

Ladybug opened her eyes.

And saw a perfectly undamaged wall.

…what?

\--

Ladybug called Chat. It went straight to voicemail—expected, really—but his usual ‘leave a message’ spiel was absent. She rattled off what had happened, and the way there was a weird feeling in the air, her spine crawling and like… like there was something on fire, maybe. Something dark and dirty and probably relating to an akuma, but not one that she could find or even catch wind of. Something was off, and whatever sense Tikki had granted her to tell when something was wrong was going off like an alarm on the morning of the biggest test of her life.

Something.

It was just… something.

And she had no idea what.

Ladybug was pretty sure the civilians felt it too, because she saw and heard more people awake than she had on her trip out, milling about in the dark in a way that wasn’t suited to the time. If it had been five in the morning, she’d have written it off as the early birds, or people just now coming home from a night shift, but it was still too deep in the night to be the natural breathing of the city.

Ladybug landed on her balcony, heart thudding, and transformed back into Marinette.

Tikki zipped ahead of her to land on the desk and grab a cookie. Her eyes were wide and worried when Marinette neared her, even though her mouth was full.

Marinette tripped on the rug and caught herself on her desk. She made as if to sit down, but Tikki finished her bite and said, “Go to sleep, Marinette.”

“I can’t,” she immediately answered. “There’s an akuma out there. I can’t just go back to bed.”

“You’re no use to anyone if you’re too exhausted to move, Marinette,” Tikki admonished her. “Get some sleep. You deserve it, and you need it. Besides, the air tastes dirty, but I don’t think it tastes like magic. It could still be an akuma, but I don’t think it is.”

Marinette collapsed into bed, eyes already fighting gravity. “But somethin’s—” she broke off, yawning, and tried to continue. “Wrong. Somethin’s wrong.”

“I know, Marinette,” Tikki soothed. “I feel it too. But there’s nothing we can do right now. You have school tomorrow! You need to sleep, and then we can figure out what’s going on. We’ll ask the other kwami, even!”

“Mm…” Marinette barely heard her as she drifted off. “Sounds like a… plan…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tense change for Bunnyx scenes is intentional, please don't comment to tell me about the "mistake."


	2. It's Time To Employ Some Google Fu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Literally nothing makes sense, but since when has that stopped Marinette from doing her goshdarn job?

So, Marinette woke up late.

Again.

This was normal.

She dashed about, last night’s panic near-forgotten, getting dressed and doing her hair and brushing up her teeth, just engaging in all the _normal_ little activities of a girl her age. She rushed down the stairs, calling a quick ‘bye, love you!’ over her shoulder and—

Ran into a thick arm.

“Dad?”

“Now I know you’re running late,” he said, and his voice was the kind of serious that Marinette didn’t really hear that often. It made her pause and gulp and look at him with just a touch of worry. “But you can’t go to school alone, not after what happened last night—”

_What? What happened last night?_

“And just on the next street over,” her mom fretted. What?

“—right, so let your mom walk you to school.”

“It’s only a few blocks, dad, I’ll be fine.”

“Marinette, you know that’s not an option,” her dad sighed. “Maybe in a few years, or if things settled down, but now… no.”

Her mom took her arm and led her out the door. “Come on, dear, just humor your dear old parents a bit longer, okay? We worry about you. I know it gets a little tiresome to have your parents walk you to school every morning, but it’s because we care.”

“Um, okay?”

Marinette only barely managed to grab a panicked look down at her bag to Tikki. Unfortunately, no help was coming from that quarter, because Tikki seemed as freaked out as Marinette did.

Which was great.

Marinette stayed on high alert all the way to school. The weird smell was still everywhere, and that sensation of… of being watched by something mundane but malicious? Yeah. Also everywhere.

The more she paid attention to the city around her, the more she noticed that felt… _wrong._

A few storefronts that didn’t look _quite_ as well-kept as Marinette remembered.

A few people that looked more hunted than she was used to.

A few windows that had bars when she hadn’t expected such a thing for any building short of a bank or high-ranking political figure… or Gabriel Agreste.

Marinette barely noticed her own white-knuckled grip on the strap of her bag.

They arrived. Marinette bid her mother a hasty goodbye. She rushed to class.

She didn’t have the time to duck into the bathroom and scream with Tikki about what was going on, but she really, really wanted to.

Instead, she made it through the door with thirty seconds to spare, and immediately zeroed in on her spot next to Alya. Then she noticed that Nino was sitting alone. Huh.

“Where’s Adrien?” she asked as she headed for the center aisle. Maybe he had a photoshoot she hadn’t heard about…

Nino looked at her, radiating confusion. “Who’s Adrien?”

Marinette froze. She looked at Alya, then the rest of the class, and the only person who didn’t look confused was—well, actually, three people. Kim and Max weren’t paying attention, but Chloé was, and _she_ was glaring at Marinette like she’d smeared strawberry jam all over those super expensive, deeply impractical white pants.

So this probably wasn’t just a weird prank.

Geez, this was probably some kind of memory Akuma, right? Or time-travel, going back to ensure Adrien was never born, or—

“Girl, are you gonna stand there all day?” Alya called. “There’s a seat with your name on it and the bell already rang.”

“Oh!” Marinette scrambled for her seat. “I didn’t even hear it!”

“Yeah, I noticed! You doing okay? You’re kinda spacey today.”

“I’m fine,” Marinette brushed her off as best she could. “Just haven’t been getting a lot of sleep.”

“So… Adrien?”

“Um, uh, I think I had a weird dream? Yeah! A weird dream that made me think we had someone called Adrien in our class, and he sat next to Nino. Funny how I thought it was real, right? Must be the sleep thing.”

“Uh… huh,” Alya said. “Right.”

Marinette gave her a weak smile and a thumbs up.

She considered deflecting with a question about the Ladyblog, except Mme. Bustier actually called class to order, which served as a much more natural segue into not talking about Marinette’s “weird dream.”

Leg bouncing with anxiety, Marinette pulled out her phone and typed in the site for the Ladyblog, hoping that maybe a tip had come in about the Akuma causing it.

She got an error message telling her nothing existed at this site address.

Okay. That was… weird. If the site had gotten closed down or something, Alya would have been raging about it before even addressing the Adrien thing. Marinette would have gotten _so many_ texts that morning.

Just like. So many.

She entered ‘ladyblog’ into her phone’s default search engine, but the only thing that came up was an American site about lingerie.

She hit the back button, face flaming, and decided to try a new search query.

“Ahem.”

Ah.

Oh, crumbs.

Marinette looked up at Mme. Bustier guiltily. The teacher had a hand held out, palm up, and an expectant expression on her face. Marinette handed over her phone with a wince.

“You’ll get it back at lunch.”

Great.

Marinette still had _no_ idea what was going on, except that it was very, very bad.

\--

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng!”

 _Really?_ Marinette couldn’t help but think. _Now?_

She sighed and turned around, arms crossed. “What do you want, Chloé? I’m busy.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“We’re talking.”

“In _private.”_

“Yeah, uh, not happening,” Alya cut in. “We’re not letting Marinette go _anywhere_ alone with _you.”_

Chloé’s face colored in red. “Fine, then! Be that way!”

She turned on her heel and stalked away. Sabrina lingered for a moment, bouncing nervously on the balls of her feet and looking like she wanted to say something.

“Sabrina!”

She winced. “Sorry! I need to—she’s just—I’m sorry, I have to go.”

Marinette stared.

“What the heck was _that_ about?” Alya muttered.

“I have no idea,” Marinette said faintly.

“Whatever,” Alya dismissed, with a jokingly imperious toss of her hair. “We don’t need her. Let’s go eat! I brought this stuff my mom was making from the US called gumbo, you wanna try?”

“Sure, Alya.”

The first two bites of gumbo were delicious, if a little spicy. Marinette did not get to taste more than that, because—

“Oh my god, what _is_ that thing?”

One glance out the window was all she needed.

An Akuma.

“I, um, I need to use the restroom,” she stammered, and ran off.

She transformed in an empty classroom, hopped out the window, and got to work.

Five minutes later, she was already done.

Chat hadn’t even had time to _show up._

It wasn’t an Akuma she’d fought before, which could have explained her easy victory with the fact that she already knew the weak spots. No, this was a brand new Akuma, raging and laughing and fighting, and it was so, _so_ incompetent.

When she asked about what Hawk Moth had done to change the world, the Akuma hadn’t even acknowledged that the world was changed.

No, the Akuma had been confused that she _knew who Hawk Moth was._

Ladybug purified the Akuma by rote.

She released the butterfly, and calmed the victim, and fixed the damage. She did everything by the book, except without Chat.

“Hey, hey!”

Ladybug turned and spotted Alya, hanging dangerous far out the window with her phone extended for the best video possible. Her best friend’s grin was as wide as ever. “What’s your name?!”

Ladybug stared at her.

What the _dickens?_

“I’m Ladybug!” She called back, after that slight little moment of _oh god what’s going on,_ “And I’m here to protect you against the Akuma sent by Hawk Moth!”

The class cheered. A few other classrooms did, too.

Ladybug sent out her yoyo line, swung up onto the roof, and scouted out the best avenue to get back to the classroom she’d transformed in.

It wasn’t hard. She’d been doing this for almost a year, now.

Marinette collapsed to her knees as soon as she transformed back, hands clapped over her mouth and very much on the verge of a breakdown. Her breath came in quick, frantic gasps, and her eyes blurred with the kind of tears that burned.

“Marinette?”

She couldn’t answer Tikki. It was all she could do to gesture at her purse for Tikki to take a cookie.

“Marinette, I’m worried about you.”

That was fine. Tikki was allowed to worry about Marinette, because _Marinette_ didn’t have the energy to worry about Marinette right now, because Marinette was worrying about _all of Paris._

Tikki didn’t have answers. Alya _wouldn’t_ have answers. Chat was… not here at the moment, and Marinette had a sinking feeling she’d only get his voicemail again if she tried calling him.

She finally calmed down enough to get to her feet and head back to class.

“If it was _that_ bad, Bunnyx would have already shown up, right?” she asked Tikki. “So whatever it is that’s happening, I can fix it on my own.”

Tikki nodded. This was not as reassuring as it should have been.

She took her seat, and told people she’d just been a little extra scared of the Akuma, and gone to hide. Everyone accepted this, because _apparently_ nobody remembered that Akumas existed and had been terrorizing Paris for the last year.

Marinette’s phone buzzed a few times. She ignored it this time, just waited for Mme. Mendeliev to let them begin work on their projects, and turned to Alya as soon as she could.

“Do you think CV’s gonna be on this?” Alya asked.

“What do you mean?” Marinette asked.

She had no idea who CV even was, but after the whole thing with Adrien not going to Dupont anymore, Marinette wasn’t going to let Alya know that.

“I mean, she’s _hella_ protective of Paris. Do you think she’ll appreciate the help or get all… you know, ‘why are you horning in on my territory, little girl, scat!’ like she did when that American guy showed up a few years ago?”

“I don’t… know?” Marinette hazarded. “I mean, the Akuma seems like a pretty big deal, and Ladybug handled it pretty neatly, right? She looked like she knew what she was doing.”

“True, but what if CV decides she _brought the trouble with her?”_ Alya asked. “Like—like it followed her! I can see the headlines now, ‘Crimson Vision Demands Explanations from New Teenage Hero’ or something!”

“Um…” Marinette tried not to panic. “I really don’t know what to tell you, Alya.”

“Lay off, babe,” Nino said, leaning his head back far enough to see them, which was incidentally far enough that he had to put a hand up to keep his hat from falling off. “Marinette was like _totally freaked_ by that thing, Alya. Maybe stop reminding her of it.”

“Oh, right,” Alya said, subsiding. “I’ll talk to Juleka about it, maybe? She seemed really into the whole thing.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Marinette said. She snuck a look at Nino and mouthed ‘thank you.’

He grinned back and shot her some finger guns, and mouthed back ‘no problem, dudette.’

It did help a lot. She’d have to get Nino some baked goods or something later. Maybe some cheese danishes.

She just… really wished she wasn’t as alone in this as she felt.

Marinette was lost. She couldn’t rely on Alya. Chat hadn’t picked up and, if everything else was playing out the way it seemed to, and his answering message was missing, then he might have gone the way of so many other things, and just not exist.

Her parents were caught up in whatever this was. It seemed like almost everyone except her and Tikki was, and she hadn’t even gotten a chance to ask the other Kwami yet.

Master Fu was… well. She’d never be able to rely on him for Miraculous tutelage again. Hawk Moth had seen to that.

(She hoped he was happy with Marianne, but… in the names of all the little gods she was now Guardian of, she missed him. She needed guidance. She needed a teacher.)

(She needed a goshdarn _adult.)_

Marinette’s head ached almost as much as her heart did, and she tried to join in on the project with Nino and Alya instead of dwelling on just how alone she felt. The only real comfort was that Hawk Moth was either thrown off his game, or was as entirely new to Akumas as Marinette’s class was.

It was a cold comfort, but it was still a comfort nonetheless.

Her phone buzzed again.

She gave in and picked it up. She only read the first message before she had to stop and maybe, just maybe, panic a little. And feel relief. But mostly panic.

> **From: Chloé  
> ** okay so i plannedon asking you in private but thats not an option but like  
> i think you’re the only one this would mean anything to so just tell me if you know what these are because i think you know whats going on and you’re the only one so far that does  
> Antibug, Queen Bee, Queen Wasp, Miracle Queen  
> i can list more if you want but if you know what i'm talking about, then you know what these are

Oh.

Oh _crumbs._

\--

When Chloé went to bed the night after Lila got herself Akumatized _(again),_ she only sort of felt like there was something wrong with Paris.

Just like. Kind of. Something in the air was off, but like, it was Paris. Something was _always_ off, and that something was Hawk Moth. And Mayura. And maybe Lila herself, the _bitch._

Sure, Chloé had worked with Hawk Moth of her own free will, but _Lila_ had… had…

Well, okay, Chloé only had a _hunch_ that Lila’s involvement was premeditated, but still!

The point was, something was off, but there weren’t any giant fires or screaming civilians, so it wasn’t something Chloé had to worry about.

And even if there _had_ been giant fires or screaming civilians, she wasn’t _allowed_ to worry about it.

Ladybug had made that much perfectly clear.

(She deserved it she deserved it she _deserved it for what she’d chosen to--)_

(And _snap!_ went the lock on that train of thought.)

(Hawk Moth manipulated her. It did not absolve her, but he was an older man and she was a teenager whose parents had been Akumatized. It did not absolve her, but it was his fault. _It did not absolve her, but it was his fault.)_

(Chloé repeated the words until her heart rate calmed down.)

(Every. Damn. Time.)

Anyway, Chloé went to sleep feeling, like, an eight out of ten on her normal scale these days. It would have been a six on the scale she had before Miracle Queen, but her standards had been knocked down by _quite_ a few people since then, so… whatever. Eight out of ten. Not the best, but altogether not exactly anticipating anything particularly weird to happen.

Chloé, as occasionally must be said, was not known for her hunches.

She woke up feeling content, if not properly refreshed, and headed for the bathroom to take a shower and get ready for the day. She glanced at the mirror outside the bathroom door, a flicker of surprise crossing her mind, and then paused, because… what… what was there to be surprised _about?_

She put her hands on her hips and glared at her reflection. “Chin up! I’m going to school, and I’ll impress Adrikins with the fact that I know English better than he does, and I’ll talk to Sabrina and get her to look over my homework instead of making her do it for me! And it’s going to be _fine!”_

Her reflection did not answer her.

_“I graduated university three years ago, so acting like I’m going to collége doesn’t make much sense… thought neither does looking like I’m fifteen again.”_

Except it did.

 _“I guess I’m lucid-dreaming,”_ her reflection said, and then went back to normal as another version of Chloé stepped back and grew taller, buffer, less… rough. _“Wonder why I’d be back here…”_

“Oh my god, I’m going to be so hot,” Chloé whispered. Then she pinched herself, just in case it wasn’t a dream. Seeing as her reflection continued to be there, and the pinch hurt, and Chloé was neither suddenly waking up nor suddenly in full control of her surroundings, she figured that she wasn’t dreaming.

In response to this realization, Chloé did the only thing that made sense, and leapt backwards to her bed, picked up the knife she’d hidden under the mattress, and yelled, “Akuma!”

Her older reflection stared at her. _“What?”_

“You—you have to be some kind of Akuma,” Chloé said. “Or at least the _effect_ of one. Right? Hawk Moth sent you?”

 _“…who?”_ her older reflection asked.

“I’m going insane,” Chloé whispered. “Or—or an Akuma caused you, and you’re not aware of it? Maybe, like, a sentimonster. That would make sense. Or—”

 _“Sweetheart, I have_ no _idea what you’re talking about,”_ older Chloé said. _“Is this some kind of magic thing? Also, I don’t… remember Adrien ever going to school with me.”_

“Uh, yeah! Probably! And he started earlier this year and _why is part of my brain saying that I don’t know an Adrien?_ ” Chloé whisper-shrieked. She figured she could be a little shrill and unreasonable right now. Akuma attacks were a healthy excuse for unhealthy behavior. Including the knife that would never replace Queen Bee’s spinning top, but would do in a pinch. “This is—this is ridiculous! Utterly _ri-DIC-ulous!”_

 _“O…kay, haven’t said that since I was twenty-one…”_ older Chloé muttered. _“Um… maybe if I meditated I can reverse engineer my way out of the dream…”_

That actually sounded like a grand plan to Chloé, but she didn’t want to admit it. This was just a bad dream, or a figment of her imagination. She probably wasn’t _really_ going crazy.

Chloé dropped to the ground and closed her eyes and tried doing the exercises she’d started after Miracle Queen.

Empty the mind.

Imagine yourself sitting at the bottom of an ocean. Watching your breath go in bubbles to the surface, wavering edges that disappeared from sight with the distance. Breathe.

_“Oh my.”_

Chloé’s eyes opened.

Chloé had not, in fact, _told_ her eyes to open.

She held still for a moment, as her arm reached up to her face and her body moved, both in the real world and in the mirror. Her older self mirrored the actions, and all three Chloé’s moved in unison for a moment. Older Chloé’s body wavered at the edges, growing indistinct and shrinking, and—

Chloé snatched her hand down and stared into the mirror, breath suddenly coming in sharp gasps.

_“Well, that worked out poorly. Seven-eight-four, kiddo, you can do it.”_

“What?”

_“Seven counts breathing in, eight counts holding, four breathing out.”_

Oh right. That.

Chloé screwed her eyes shut and started breathing to the count of the woman in her mind. Helping her down from what was sure to be an _epic_ panic attack was… not the usual Akuma behavior, but whatever. Maybe this one was, like, the effect of a psychologist akuma who wanted to force people to take care of themselves and seek help.

_“Hey, tiny me?”_

Chloé whimpered an acknowledgement, mostly because she was admittedly _not_ looking forward to whatever her older self said.

_“I think… when you close your eyes, I get to see inside your head.”_

“Like _that’s_ not terrifying!”

 _“Hey, didn’t say I chose it! But you’re me, and I’m you, and a lot of these memories are… not exactly the same, but close enough to count, I’d say. What’s interesting, though, is that there’s a third… set? Box? Nothing’s physical in here, but it_ feels _like a box held between mine and yours. If you want to know what’s going on, I’d suggest I open it.”_

“It’s _my_ head!” Chloé snapped. “I get to decide what gets opened.”

_“I know. That’s why I asked permission. This might be the part of you that was saying that you don’t know Adrien.”_

“…whatever,” Chloé grumbled. “I’m… I need to shower. Look away.”

 _“It used to be my body. There is quite literally_ nothing _about you that is different from me at the same age.”_

“Wanna bet?” Chloé muttered.

She took the damn shower, mind still racing. She had an hour until she had to leave for school. Hair-washing could be put off for another day and save her time, just dry shampoo with a ponytail. Nobody would notice. Makeup could be simplified without losing the full effect. She could shave off the minutes she’d lost to the freakout and gain a few for the most important task of the morning:

Research.

**Search: Adrien Agreste**

The first search turned up some things that had Chloé’s stomach tightening in fear, and the older Chloé humming something that implied ‘well, that’s about right.’

There _was_ an Adrien Agreste in… whatever situation this was (Chloé was starting to wonder if it was some ghost of Christmas past thing? Except it was April, so no). He was still the model son of famous fashion designer Gabriel Agreste. He was still blonde, and had green eyes, and looked like an angel.

He was also twenty-five and currently working on an advanced quantum physics degree, with a focus on entropy and chaos theory, at _Sorbonne Université._

He was also still a model and apparently working to inherit his dad’s company.

 _“That matches up with my memories,”_ Older Chloé offered.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Chloé snapped.

**Search: Queen Bee| Filter: News, in the last week**

Nothing. Just some scientific articles on honeybee populations and the best types of flowers to support them.

_“You were a superhero?”_

“And a villain. Shut up.”

**Search: Ladybug| Filter: News, in the last week**

Again, nothing except a handful of scientific articles and a spring festival announcement that involved a ladybug theme.

But nothing about _the_ Ladybug. Not even when she added in Paris as a keyword.

_“You look up to her?”_

“I did. I do. It’s complicated, shut _up.”_

**Search: Chat Noir| Filter: News, in the last week**

Bingo.

Chat Noir was active and had been for about ten years, once she dropped the additional filters and hunted down his Wikipedia page. Looked about the same if she accounted for age and some extra armor, similar powers… yeah, this was her guy. No word of Hawk Moth or Mayura or akuma in general, but this Chat _did_ have a partner who wore a lot of red.

Crimson Vision, huh? Maybe that was this situation’s stand-in for Ladybug. Maybe Ladybug was… taken care of?

 _“Crimson Vision’s been around since I was your age,”_ Older Chloé told her.

“Yeah, well, let’s read up on her,” Chloé grumped. She stole a glance at the clock and… she had time. Not much, but she’d make it work.

> **_Crimson Vision (civilian identity: unknown)_ **
> 
> _Active since September 2009, Crimson Vision (often referred to as ‘CV’) and **Chat Noir** have been the defenders of Paris, shortly after joined by **Riposte** in 2011. While neither identity has come to light, growth rates suggest that the pair were born sometime around the mid-1990s and are currently in their mid-twenties. They have extensive criminal records; however, no official has attempted to have them prosecuted since 2012, in acknowledgement of the valuable services they provide the city._
> 
> _Crimson Vision’s title arose naturally from her activities. Within the Parisian black market and criminal empires, she has a reputation for arriving out of nowhere like a ghost, phantom, or indeed a ‘vision,’ and her uniform is largely red and black **(see image).** Her reputation has been further recounted, largely by those seeking lesser sentences in exchange for information and cooperation with authorities, as one built largely on terror to specific groups in the city’s underbelly. Recorded targets include several large-scale drug rings, at least half a dozen human trafficking rings (several of which arose from the ashes of those she and Chat Noir had previously destroyed), and at least one major corporation via data theft and dissemination. Smaller targets dot the board, including Crimson Vision’s personal interference in a number of cases of domestic abuse, wage theft, and pickpocketing._
> 
> _When asked after her motivations in a rare interview, Crimson Vision stated, “This is my city. I was born here, I will bleed here, and eventually, I will die here. It is_ my _city, and so I will protect it with every bone in my body.”_

Chloé skipped further down the Wikipedia article, taking in the costume and powers: less focus on magical repairs, similar use of a yo-yo, inclusion of something called a Chinese oval fan that was apparently used more like a really weird _sword_ because… apparently Crimson Vision has picked an aesthetic and stuck with it. Her main costume was a hyper-dramatic version of something called a ‘hanfu’ that Chloé only vaguely recognized.

The ladybug spots she’d gotten used to her own heroine were missing, too; CV only had one large red splotch on each overlarge sleeve (fighting in those _had_ to rely on luck powers, right?), and a darkening ombre effect from the waist down.

Were there two-spotted ladybugs?

There were.

Huh.

Weird.

 _“She hasn’t always looked like that,”_ her older self interrupted. _“Her look was a bit more… western standard, I guess? But she started moving to this a few years in. There might be pictures if there’s a gallery section.”_

“Maybe later,” Chloé muttered. “I only have a few minutes left, but… the crime rates are super weird. I don’t remember anything about drug rings or human trafficking coming up for _decades,_ and my dad’s the mayor!”

_“We have the same dad, but… yes. I grew up with stories of why it wasn’t safe to walk to school alone. From what you’re saying, your Paris was… idyllic, maybe.”_

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice,” Chloé agreed. “But that’s like… everything so far matches your… I guess your world, right? So why don’t I?”

_“I don’t know. You could check the crime rates. I know they publish studies.”_

“I’ll look it up in the car,” Chloé decided. She got up and grabbed whatever she still needed. “Until I figure out what’s going on, though, you’re stuck with me.”

Her older self laughed. _“Alright then. What should I call you? We have the same name, after all.”_

“Call me… Bee.” Not Queen Bee. She didn’t deserve that, not anymore. But she could do her part for the hive that was Paris, and help Ladybug, and maybe earn ~~her mother’s love~~ a bit of respect along the way.

And help people. Right. That too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marinette's attitude towards swearing is based on my own at that age. It's not a religious thing or whatever, it's just Not Something Young People Should Be Doing If They Want Adults To Respect Them.  
> (Fun fact, I'm now twenty-four and still feel uncomfortable swearing in anything other than extreme situations, which only happens once every few months, if at all.
> 
> Also, I'll get into the details of Chloe's current state of mind as the story progresses. This is extrapolated from canon, but will seem a little weird until exposition in the next few chapters.


	3. Queenie and Little Bee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Same day. Different perspective. Someone needs an adult.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I finally found the comedy?
> 
> That said, this chapter delves into Chloe's mom-related issues so... yeah. Child abuse mentions all over the place.

Chloé went through the motions of going to school by instinct. Her older self whispered suggestions now and again, when it seemed like Chloé was maybe about to ruin whatever persona she needed to keep up by acting like everything was fine and dandy instead of ‘death lurks around every corner.’

_“Any idea what you’ll be calling me, Little Bee?”_

Chloé’s nose twitched in distaste at being called ‘little,’ but she admitted that it probably made sense. She was younger, and the shape of the nickname was better than the single syllable. Somehow.

(She wasn’t ready to admit that it was almost comforting, to be called a nickname that wasn’t a parent or a hero name. Even if it was by her older self, it was still…)

(Anyway.)

“Yellowjacket?” Chloé muttered to herself. **_Hornet? Not Wasp, that’s got bad memories for me._**

 _“How about something unrelated?”_ her older self suggested. _“How about just Boss?”_

**_Ew, no._ **

Her older self laughed. _“Queenie, then? Duchesse? Oooh, let’s do Comtesse.”_

**_Ugh, let’s just do Queenie._ **

‘Queenie’ laughed at her again.

Chloé pulled her phone out as she got into the limo, and wondered if maybe she had enough time to actually do that research.

_“I’d suggest opening the box of memories we don’t recognize.”_

**_And what if it leaves me catatonic or something?_** Chloé snapped back. She opened up a compact and held it far enough that she could see Queenie, if she turned it to the side.

 _“You know,”_ Queenie said, _“I’m not actually sitting there. I don’t feel like I’m next to you. But I can sort of sit like this in your head once you pull a mirror out. Like your temporary visualization gives me almost-solid things to interact with, but only inside your head. I can’t actually look to the side and see you… I think?”_

Chloé glared at her.

 _“Kid, I’m just as unprepared for this as you are,”_ Queenie said, arching one perfect eyebrow. _“Best we can do is try to analyze it, right now.”_

Chloé huffed and snapped the compact shut. **_I know. But there isn’t a healthy outlet for me to be full of rage right now._**

_“Well, that’s certainly true.”_

Chloé’s leg bounced as they pulled up in front of the school, and she got out with the kind of frown that had Sabrina _immediately_ offering help.

“I’m fine,” Chloé snapped. Wait. No. Shit. She was supposed to be nicer to Sabrina than that. “I mean, I’m… I’m not fine, but it’s not something you can help with. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh! Okay, Chloé, but if you need _anything,_ just ask me!”

Boundaries. They’d talked about this.

The _therapists_ had talked about this.

 _“My Sabrina didn’t see a therapist until lycée,”_ Queenie said quietly.

“Let’s just get inside,” Chloé said, swinging her bag over her shoulder before Sabrina could take it. Was she supposed to be a bit meaner to throw off suspicion? She didn’t want to, like, backslide or anything.

 _“Actually, Sabrina being here means that I…_ we _aren’t the only things changed right now,”_ Queenie pointed out. _“That’s at least the two of us downsized, so to speak. Adrien exists as I remember him last, which is doing a crazy-hard doctorate, but Sabrina’s just as tiny as you are.”_

**_Do you think she remembers?_ **

_“Only one way to find out, little honeybee?”_

Ugh, really? Chloé didn’t acknowledge the continuing variants on name. “Hey, Sabrina.”

“Yes?”

Oh, so eager to please. “Remember Antibug?”

“Um… no?”

Oh god, she was cringing away in anticipation of a Chloé tantrum. That was bad. Chloé knew that was bad. That was ‘we both know we’re supposed to get away from each other for a few days to recover’ bad.

Except apparently they’d never had anyone here explain _why_ that was bad.

“Never mind,” Chloé said, turning away and looking at her phone. “Must have talked to someone else about it.”

“Someone else?” Sabrina asked. “Um, who else could it have been?”

“I don’t know. Probably the son of some important person my dad was talking to that I was supposed to play nice with,” Chloé dismissed. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s sit down, my legs are tired.”

Chloé’s leg started bouncing again pretty much as soon as she sat down, the nervous energy getting sent into whatever outlet wasn’t going to get her chewed out for damaging school property with a sharp object as she played the knife game. That had only happened once, and Chloé threatening to call her dad had backfired _hard_ that day. Expert aim with a nail file or not, she was still putting herself in danger for seemingly no reason, and Daddy hadn’t liked that at all.

People filed into the room. She recognized everyone, though there were small differences. Subtle ones. A frayed cuff on a shirt older than she’d have expected. A longer hemline than one might have wanted in this weather. A baseball bat in a backpack, even though Kim didn’t play baseball. A… well, Chloé was _pretty_ sure the thing in Ivan’s pocket was a knuckleduster.

“Gosh,” Chloé sighed, stretching and throwing her voice a little. “There just aren’t enough blondes in this room. Like, can’t we get some more of me in here?”

“There’s Rose?” Sabrina said, sounding confused and nervous, but still trying. “And, um, Kim isn’t _naturally_ blonde, but maybe he counts?”

Nobody chimed in with a ‘what, Adrien isn’t enough for you?’

Chloé clenched her jaw. She rolled her eyes and slumped over her desk, pouting. Goddammit.

Hm. No Marinette Dupain-Cheng yet, but that was normal. She was late more often than not. No Lila either, which was… weird, but if Paris had as much crime as Queenie said, then maybe Lila’s mom had decided on homeschooling, or Lila had stayed with her dad in Italy.

Okay, fine. Adrien was clearly unremembered, but there were other things to bring up. Like… akumatizations?

“Hey, Lahiffe,” she called out, getting a suspicious look for her trouble. Whatever. “You’re not going to start pulling out those bubbles and getting the floors all sticky again, right? That was, like, so école.”

“The hell’s your problem?” Nino demanded. “I got caught with a bubble wand _once_ and they asked me to keep it outside, how is that even a _thing_ to you?”

Chloé ignored him. “And Cesaire, are you ready to stop playing fox in the henhouse? Because, really, you’re nowhere near as badass as you think you are, so—”

“Oh, can it,” Alya said sharply, waving her off. She didn’t even look up from her tablet, and there wasn’t a flicker of recognition on her face to acknowledge Chloé poking at her alterego. “I don’t know why you’re even worse than usual today, but I’ve got a new issue of Majestia to read before class starts, and you’re not ruining my mood.”

God, Chloé wanted to punch something. Before she could try and needle Kim about Dark Cupid, or bring up Juleka’s photo curse, Mme. Bustier walked in.

Chloé turned back around and seethed.

Nothing. Not a single reaction from _anyone._ Sure, she’d only really poked at Nino and Alya, but _someone_ should have reacted.

Sabrina tapped her elbow. “Chloé? Is there something going on? Can I help?”

“Maybe later,” Chloé said. Mme. Bustier was taking note of all the students, which meant class had probably started. Dammit. She’d have to do something later to get word to… someone. Probably Chat Noir. If nothing else, he’d know _someone_ with magic that could address this, right?

_“Good plan, Little Bee.”_

It was growing on her.

The door suddenly slammed open, and just like any other day, there stood Marinette Dupain-Cheng, panting and red-faced and saying, “I made it. Thirty seconds!”

Chloé checked her watch. Huh. So Mme. Bustier had started early.

“Maybe try to give yourself a little more time tomorrow,” the teacher said. “Go ahead and take your seat. We won’t make a note of it today. You were on time, after all.”

Marinette nodded, and took a few moments to regain herself. She looked around as she headed for her seat, and the confusion on her face was almost palpable as she looked at Nino. “Where’s Adrien?”

“Who’s Adrien?”

Son of a _bitch._

Marinette stood there, frozen and staring with an expression that was mostly blank but a tiny bit horrified, the kind that was only just dawning, and Chloé had to try very hard not to snap her pencil.

**_You little_ fucker.**

_“Wow, harsh,”_ Queenie whispered.

At least Marinette was clever and, like, eager to help people and fix problems. This was a problem, right?

So what if Marinette hated her guts and Chloé hated her right back? They could probably put that aside to save Paris.

Maybe.

“Girl, are you gonna stand there all day?” Alya called. “There’s a seat with your name on it and the bell already rang.”

Marinette jumped with a start, going red again. “Oh! I didn’t even hear it!”

Alya laughed, and Chloé watched Marinette go up with what _hopefully_ wasn’t a murder face. Alya said, “Yeah, I noticed! You doing okay? You’re kinda spacey today.”

“I’m fine,” Marinette answered, with that brittle smile Chloé caught on her a few times. Usually she tried to break it. “Just haven’t been getting a lot of sleep.”

“So… Adrien?”

Chloé strained to hear them, clenched fist pushing against the wood _hard._ Marinette tittered nervously. “Um, uh, I think I had a weird dream? Yeah! A weird dream that made me think we had someone called Adrien in our class, and he sat next to Nino. Funny how I thought it was real, right? Must be the sleep thing.”

“Uh… huh,” Alya said. “Right.”

Marinette gave her a weak smile and a thumbs up, and Chloé wanted to get up and drag her out of the room because, one, that may have been a better lie that _some_ of the horseshit that came out of Marinette’s mouth, but it was still emphatically not great in the delivery, and two, Marinette _clearly remembered!_

Fuck!

_“Breathe, kiddo.”_

Chloé closed her eyes and tried to breathe as class started. Sabrina could cover for her if something went horribly wrong.

**_Open the box._ **

_“You sure?”_

**_Yeah. Do it._ **

\--

It was anticlimactic.

There were new memories, and Queenie sifted through them pretty quickly, but there wasn’t some horrifying side effect to it, like seizures or glowing lights or hallucinations. It was just Chloé thinking ‘huh, I wonder what I associate this book we’re reading with?’ and getting three slightly different answers.

Mme. Bustier split them up for a project, and Chloé waited until the noise was building and Mme. Bustier was up near Ivan and Nathanael. She turned to Sabrina and said, “I need to ask you something.”

“Okay!”

“No, listen, I… the questions are going to be weird. I can’t tell you _why_ I’m asking you them, I just need you to answer them without asking why. I… you’re the only one I can trust to _not_ go around sharing my secrets, okay?”

Sabrina blushed.

O…kay then.

“You’ve got my word as a Raincomprix!”

Chloé glanced over her shoulder at Mme. Bustier. Distracted by the boys, still.

“Okay. To the best of your knowledge, what’s my relationship with Adrien Agreste?”

“You told me once that he used to babysit you at fancy parties because he was the only one worth your attention.”

_Oof._

Chloé tried not to grimace. “Right. Has Prince Ali ever been to France?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Have you ever heard of a superhero called Ladybug?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Mme. Bustier was heading down their way. One last question.

“When’s the last time my mother came to Paris?”

“I thought you said you hadn’t seen her since you were four?”

_Snap._

Chloé’s eyes screwed shut.

She took a breath.

Fuck that.

“Let’s do the project,” she grunted, opening her binder and letting her foot start bouncing again.

\--

Chloé could barely wait for lunchtime. She got delayed a moment by the papers on her desk and whatnot, but she powerwalked out of the room and down the hallway, Sabrina trotting behind her. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng!”

Marinette sighed and turned around, arms crossed. The look on her face was… a kind interpretation would have been ‘tired.’ A less kind interpretation would have been ‘somewhat disgusted.’

“What do you want, Chloé? I’m busy.”

Chloé drew herself up into as professional a stance as she could. “I need to talk to you.”

“We’re talking,” Marinette stonewalled.

“In _private,”_ Chloé stressed, hoping she’d catch the weight of what needed to be said.

“Yeah, uh, not happening,” Alya said, stepping forward and just a little in front of Marinette. It was only the shoulder, really, but it was still a strong sign to Chloé to back off. “We’re not letting Marinette go _anywhere_ alone with _you.”_

Chloé’s face burned. So did her eyes, but she ignored that part. “Fine, then! Be that way!”

She turned around and tried to figure out what to do next. Take a moment for herself, probably. Her emotions weren’t exactly stable, and she couldn’t actually _talk_ to anyone about it, let alone—wait, where was…

“Sabrina!”

She heard Sabrina yelp and apologize to the girls. “Sorry! I need to—she’s just—I’m sorry, I have to go.”

Well, good to know that Sabrina could notice when Chloé wasn’t in the best of moods in a way that was damaging to more than just Chloé herself.

Chloé went to the restroom and slammed the door open. Nobody was in there, just empty stalls and a dripping faucet. She propped herself up on the sink, glaring into the mirror.

Queenie looked back at her, arms folded and leaning up against the stalls.

“Chloé?” Sabrina asked hesitantly. “Are you… okay?”

“Maybe,” Chloé said. “Probably not. I might be going crazy, and the only way to figure it out is to talk to Marinette.”

 _“Good on you for telling the truth,”_ Queenie praised. _“Do you have any other ideas? I don’t think I ever had her phone number, but that doesn’t mean much. Maybe we had it for a school project or something.”_

“Texting,” Chloé said. She dug her phone out, and while Marinette wasn’t in there… “Sabrina, do you have Marinette’s phone number?”

“Oh! Um, yes, I think so. I needed to work with her last year, and I don’t think I deleted it…” Sabrina said, flipping through her own contact lists at high speed. “Found it!”

Chloé grabbed the phone and copied down the phone number. “Thanks.”

Sabrina didn’t immediately take the phone back when Chloé held it out. Chloé looked up and found Sabrina staring at her with wide, wet eyes and a tiny hint of a blush.

“What?” Chloé asked, immediately uncomfortable. “Uh, you—you can take your phone back.”

“You’re just being really nice today,” Sabrina mumbled, taking the phone and looking down at the tile. “Is… is something going on?”

 _“How often do you thank the girl?”_ Queenie asked.

**_Shut up._ **

“I’m working on being nicer,” Chloé said. What was a thing she could say that wouldn’t involve bringing up incidents that had never even _happened_ in this world? Dimension. Timeline? “I decided I don’t want to end up being like my mom.”

There.

It was even the truth.

And then there was screaming.

The screaming was familiar. Lots of people were screaming, and there was some wild cackling outside, and when Chloé made it back to the classroom, Alya was hanging halfway out the window with her phone trained on something that wasn’t immediately visible. Nino was actually hanging on to her belt with a look of, panic, like he was entirely convinced that she’d fall if he stopped. He was probably not entirely wrong. This was all actually very normal, in Chloé’s experience, because it happened twice a week.

_“How many of those times are your fault?”_

**_Less than they used to be._ **

Unfortunately, it looked like _nobody else_ considered this normal, because not a single bit of standard Akuma attack procedure was being followed.

She idly wondered, in the short flash of thought that was a burst of inspiration instead of anything she actively wanted to work on thinking about, if Nino was _aware_ of the fact that he was the only one of Adrien’s immediate friends that was anywhere near emotionally stable.

_“Well, you’re a mess of mommy issues, and Adrien himself is a mess of daddy issues, and going by the memories you’re cycling through… Marinette can’t seem to string two sentences together around him, Alya’s an adrenaline junky with no sense of self-preservation, Wayhem is a fanboy, and Kagami doesn’t seem to know how to interact with humans other than her mom, so…”_

“Is now really the time?” Chloé hissed under her breath, already at the window.

Ladybug.

Thank _fuck._

Chloé’s knuckles turned white as she watched the superheroine fight. This wasn’t Crimson Vision, going by the photos she’d seen while researching earlier. This was the Ladybug that Chloé knew and maybe even still loved and respected. This was the Ladybug that was probably her own age (and somewhere in her own school, given the number of heroes that were in her class. This was a Ladybug that had sacrificed fashion for practicality. This was the Ladybug that Chloé had fought with, for, and against.

And nobody else recognized her.

A number of rude words passed through Chloé’s mind at that. She wasn’t going to say them in front of Mme. Bustier, but she was definitely running through them in her mind. Queenie was contributing a few suggestions of her own.

She turned around and sat down in her seat as soon as Ladybug won, which didn’t take long at all. Chat didn’t show, but Chloé had a good idea as to why.

There was an itch under her skin as the class settled back down, and her leg started bouncing again. She fiddled with her pen, another little outlet for the tight coil of anxiety and mild rage, and pulled out her phone. Lunch wasn’t over yet, and she could always just argue that her dad was blowing up her texts with worried inquiries. It had the benefit of being true, so there was evidence.

Marinette didn’t come back to join them until they’d already started lessons again, this time in Mme. Mendeleiev’s room.

Chloé finally just shoved down the nervousness and typed up what she hoped would be enough to catch Marinette’s attention.

> **From: Chloé  
> ** okay so i plannedon asking you in private but thats not an option but like  
> i think you’re the only one this would mean anything to so just tell me if you know what these are because i think you know whats going on and you’re the only one so far that does  
> Antibug, Queen Bee, Queen Wasp, Miracle Queen  
> i can list more if you want but if you know what i'm talking about, then you know what these are

Everyone she’d been.

Her biggest shame, right there.

She wondered if the typos would make Marinette not take her as seriously. She wondered if she’d misread the situation, and Marinette really _had_ just had a dream about Adrien, instead of the real, solid memories that Chloé had. She wondered if Marinette’s hatred for Chloé herself would outweigh her desire to figure out what was going on.

She wondered if Marinette had ever gotten Alya’s secret for how to contact Ladybug directly.

Sabrina caught her eye, and Chloé looked away sharply.

_“She’s worried about you, Little Bee.”_

**_I know that._ **

_“So maybe don’t be so rude about it to her.”_

Rude? Had she been rude?

_“Kiddo, you had your nose up in the air. You made a ‘hmph’ noise. Yeah. That was rude.”_

Oh.

Well, then, she’d keep it in mind.

She snuck a look over her shoulder. Marinette was still working with Alya. The girl hadn’t even pulled her phone out of her purse.

Maybe if she just texted enough times for the buzzing to grab her attention?

> **From: Chloé  
> ** listen I know you hate me and all but please answer me i’m freaking out like hell rn  
> Marinette  
> MariNETET

_“Slow down, Little Bee. She’s busy.”_

**_I am_ freaking out, _Queenie._**

Chloé glared into the reflection on her phone screen. Queenie smiled almost indulgently back.

Chloé opened up the messenger app, because impulse control was for losers.

_“No, honey, it really isn’t.”_

Okay, whatever. She had to… okay, so the capslock was a bit much, right? That was, like, yelling. That was a thing she was supposed to apologize for now.

_“Yes. You yelled without a good reason. That is indeed a thing to apologize for.”_

**_No need to be so condescending._ **

_“I’m you. What kind of advice did you_ think _you’d give someone?”_

Right.

Ugh.

Why was being a better person so much _effort?_

> **From: Chloé  
> ** i'm sorry for yelling  
> i'm trying to be better about that  
> i think im just really scared rn because theres a lot going on  
> and you knew about Adrikins and like  
> that’s more than anyone else so???

She put her phone away and tried to just… breathe. She turned back to Sabrina, and started working on the project, and tried not to think about the messages burning a hole in her pocket.

Nothing.

Every check on her screen had news alerts, and Instagram alerts, and messages from Daddy about how he wanted to know if she wanted him to send a limo to pick her up.

But _nothing_ from Marinette.

_“Ho, don’t do it.”_

**_Bitch, watch me._ **

_“Oh my god.”_

> **From: Chloé  
> ** im going to stop texting bc i realized your class rep so you probs try not to use ur phone esp when you got caught this morning  
> but yea pls text me back asap

Chloé put her phone away one more time. She snuck one more look back at Marinette, and her heart leapt into her throat as Marinette pulled her phone out, irritation all over her face.

That irritation was gone in a flash, replaced with white-faced terror.

Well.

Okay, then.

Not the most flattering reaction.

> **From: Marinette  
> ** You remember???
> 
> **From: Chloé  
> ** ye  
> do you?  
> i figured you did but like idk i could have just been readin it wrong  
> can you like lsit some akuma you remember to prove it
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** From just our class: Zombizoo, Vanisher, Miracula, Dark Cupid, Bubbler, Lady Wifi, Princess Fragrance, Reflekta, Oblivio, Horrificator, Timebreaker, Evillustrator, Stoneheart, Gamer, Robustus

Chloé stared at her phone. Cool. That was definitely enough evidence.

_“Who the hell came up with those names?”_

**_Listen, nobody said Hawk Moth was good at this shit._ **

> **From: Chloé  
> ** yeah that tracks  
> uh  
> what do we do about this  
> did Alya evr tlel you how to talk to ldybug
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Yes. I’ll see if it still works.

Marinette paused, frowning at her phone for a good long moment where Chloé tried not to rip her own heart out in frustration.

Metaphorically, of course.

Finally, Marinette started typing again.

> **From: Marinette  
> ** Do you know where my family bakery is?
> 
> **From: Chloé  
> ** ye
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Okay cool. Meet me there after school.

Okay.

Okay okay okay.

There was a _plan._

And they even had an adult on their side. Sort of.

_“Am I the adult in this situation?”_

**_Do you have a mortgage, car loan, or pay taxes?_ **

_“Unfortunately.”_

**_Then yes. You are the adult in this situation._ **

_“Ew.”_

\--

Chloé didn’t enjoy the remaining hours of the school day. She didn’t text Marinette again, and she couldn’t explain to Sabrina just what it was that was going on, which meant Sabrina got upset and started folding in on herself because she’d built her entire personality around Chloé and, flattering as it was, it was emphatically not healthy.

They’d been told this ever since Chloé had—

Had…

Anyway.

Chloé pulled out a blank notebook, the kind of pretty thing she kept in her bag because it made her look classy, not because she actually used it.

Except, well, she had used it, in her own timeline. The Chloé of this mixed timeline hadn’t, but…

Chloé opened it up and wrote a quick title page.

_Coping Mechanisms and Lessons to Remember  
Property of Chloé Bourgeois_

Five pages with a header each. Five pages full of lessons and mantras and things to remember when she started backsliding.

Self-esteem Page One

  * My mother’s opinion of me is not the be-all, end-all.
  * I should not have to earn my mother’s love.
  * I am rich, but wealth does not make me better. The only way money can make me a good person is to do something useful with it.
  * Being Queen Bee was important, and it was a good thing to do, but I am not worthless for not being a hero anymore. There are other ways to help.



Behavior Page Two

  * I learned cruelty from my mother. My behavior can change. I am not a static person, and I can learn to be a better person. I am not stuck in what she made me.
  * I need to work on learning how to compliment people genuinely. A backhanded compliment is not a real compliment.
  * Sometimes it’s reasonable to stand up for myself. Sometimes it’s just selfish. Learning when to pull back takes practice, but it’s worth it.
  * Other people make worthy contributions to my life, and I need to thank them for it and be outwardly grateful, not just take them for granted.



Compassion Page Three

  * Learn how to see things from other’s perspectives
  * Perform acts of charity without letting anyone know. It’s about doing something for the sake of doing it, not so people will fawn over me or think I’m a better person.
  * Remorse??? Still not sure how to force myself to do that one.
  * Acts of selflessness are a thing. Same as acts of charity.



Emotional Page Four

  * Anxiety is a normal reaction to many things in life, but sometimes it’s a little much.
  * Keep working on figuring out how to release emotions in a healthy way.



Physical Page Five

  * (Need to combat recent depression symptoms)
  * Healthy eating
  * Exercise
  * Sunlight is helpful for mood as well



Interpersonal relationships Page Six

  * Work on developing healthier, non-toxic patterns of interaction with Sabrina, Adrien, Daddy, Butler Jean
  * Sabrina: respect her boundaries. Remind her that she needs boundaries. Back off when it looks like we’re breaking each other again. Say ‘thank you.’ A lot.
  * Adrien: stop flirting when it isn’t necessary. Explain the damn beard thing once we’re the same age again.
  * Daddy: stop threatening everyone using him, stop taking mom’s side against him, stop demanding unreasonable things (note: check with Adrien or Butler Jean about what is or isn’t a reasonable thing to demand. Asking to have dinner once a week with Daddy is reasonable. Asking him for a chocolate fountain on three hours notice on a whim is not)



Queenie helped write the lists.

She added suggestions, citing her own years (years!) of therapy for why she’d learned her own approaches. She gave feedback, and examples, and reminded her of the things the therapist had suggested that Chloé herself had forgotten.

_“And… the beard thing?”_

Chloé’s breath caught in her throat. **_You mean you’re not…_**

_“I am. Just wanted to check. It gets better, Little Bee, I promise you.”_

Did it, though?

Chloé caught Marinette’s eye towards the end of the school day, and then got a text.

> **From: Marinette  
> ** Don’t come right away.  
> I need to do something first.  
> Give me half an hour.
> 
> **From: Chloé  
> ** uh okay  
> ill grab a smoothie w sabrina or smthng

So she went across the street to the café, bodyguard in the car outside, and got a smoothie.

Just like she promised.

_“Breathe, kiddo.”_

**_I am._ **

_“Not steadily enough.”_

**_I am doing my damn best._ **

“Chloé? Um… can I ask why you want to meet Marinette after school?” Sabrina asked quietly. “I mean, I thought we were going to watch Sailor Moon.”

Chloé pursed her lips and looked down at her drink. “She… has answers to some questions I have. It’s complicated. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t involve you.”

_“Say please.”_

Chloé twitched. “Please.”

_“There we go!”_

**_I’m going to find a way to get you out of me just so I can punch you in the face._ **

_“Oh, good luck. I’m a foot and a half taller than you and spent the last seven years learning to channel my rage into my fists.”_

**_You are so fucking annoying._ **

_“Honeybee, we’re the same person.”_

A hand waved in front of her face, and she smacked it out of the way.

“Oh shit, sorry,” Chloé said, finally seeing Sabrina had been trying to get her attention. “That was—I got caught up in my thoughts.”

Sabrina stared at her, holding one hand with the other. She wasn’t quite cradling it, but… crap.

“I wasn’t joking about thinking I’m going crazy and Marinette maybe being able to help,” Chloé said quietly. “I’d tell you if I could, but I, like, barely know what’s going on myself.”

She looked down at her phone. It was almost time to go.

Chloé stood up, and so did Sabrina.

“I’m going to hug you now,” Chloé decided, and moved before Sabrina could even react.

Sabrina was stiff as a board for a few seconds, and then started clutching desperately like this was never going to happen again.

Chloé wanted to get back to the timeline where they’d already moved towards what the therapists called a ‘healthy relationship.’

“Want me to drop you off at the police station with your dad?”

“Yes please!”

\--

Chloé took a deep breath, ignored the limo behind her. The bodyguard would wait until she came back out.

She opened the door to _Tom & Sabine Boulangerie Patisserie._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Queenie does not want to be the adult. Like, yes, legally she's an adult, but emotionally?
> 
> The only competent adult that knows what's going on and doesn't make small children cry is Bunnyx, and she's stuck in traffic.


	4. Lasso of Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chloe has one breakdown, one crisis, one gay conundrum, one reunion, and about fifty billion cups of tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for:  
> on-screen panic attack from the perspective of the person panicking, references to off-screen child abuse (re: Audrey's treatment of Chloe), and a lot of exposition.

The woman who stood behind the counter was petite, and familiar, and looked far more stressed and tired than Chloé had ever seen her.

Sabine Cheng met Chloé’s eyes. She did not soften.

“Marinette invited me,” Chloé said, picking up her chin and brazening it out. She was supposed to be here. She had permission.

“She told me,” Sabine said. “But I’ve spent the past four years listening to my little girl talk about your behavior, and I can’t say any of it leads me to trust you, so you be good to her, you understand?”

“Obviously,” Chloé said. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Sabine crossed her arms. She lifted an eyebrow. She stared Chloé down.

_“Maybe apologize, little bee.”_

**_For what?_ **

_“For being a bitch. Now_ and _then.”_

**_She’s questioning my invitation._**

_“No, she’s questioning your intentions. Because you were a bitch. We both were. Are. Whatever. Stop being rude.”_

Ugh. “Marinette’s helping me out with something. I appreciate the fact that she’s willing to talk to me at all after everything I’ve done to her,” Chloé ground out. She didn’t meet Sabine’s eyes.

“She’s upstairs,” the woman said. “Just keep going until you reach the trapdoor.”

“Uh, thanks,” Chloé muttered. She followed the waved arm through to the living quarters of the bakery, and then started climbing.

Was she supposed to knock? Was that a thing people did for trapdoor entrances?

She knocked.

“Come in.”

Marinette didn’t sound happy.

Chloé squared her shoulders and marched up into Marinette’s room anyway.

Her eyes were assaulted by pink, first. Chloé vaguely remembered making fun of Marinette for a wall of Adrien photos that had shown up on Jagged Stone’s guest star episode of… something or other. She didn’t remember. The point was, the wall of photos was gone, replaced by a corkboard that was covered in scraps of fabric.

Marinette stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed. She looked almost frighteningly like her mother had.

“Um, hi.”

“Take a seat.”

Marinette stepped to the side, and revealed a chair. She had taped the chair to the ground.

“Why is the—”

“Take a seat.”

What the _fuck._

Chloé rolled her eyes and sat down. She put her bag on the floor—after checking it was clean, of course, she wasn’t an _animal_ —and crossed her legs. She then crossed her arms for good measure, and narrowed her eyes when Marinette did the same on the edge of the chaise across from her.

“So…” Chloé said.

“So,” Marinette said, her voice flat enough that Chloé couldn’t help but feel a little more uncomfortable than she already had.

“What do _you_ remember?” Chloé asked.

“A world that doesn’t match this one,” Marinette said. “Hawk Moth, maybe ten months. A lot of Akumas, and more than a few were caused by you.”

“Hey, I didn’t—!”

“You did,” Marinette interrupted, voice still deadly calm. “Just in our class, you were a direct or contributing cause to over half.”

“Was not.”

“Really? Juleka, you locked in a bathroom. Rose, you laughed at her note to Prince Ali. Kim, you publicly humiliated after rejecting him on Valentine’s day. Sabrina, you hurt enough to get her Akumatized _twice._ Nathanael, again with the public humiliation. Alya… you were at least a little justified in being upset, but you still got her kicked out, so I’ll count that as contributing. Alix, contributing cause. Mylene, contributing cause. Mme. Bustier, contributing cause. Max, contributing, but only the second time. Ivan, contributing, but only the second time. The only people you _weren’t_ involved in Akumatizing were Nino and Lila. Huh. So it’s almost all, not just over half.”

Chloé’s arms had somehow moved down to grip at the sides of her chair without her noticing. Her breath was short, and she could feel the warm flush of rage.

_“Breathe, little bee.”_

“I’m willing to work with you,” Marinette continued, voice still flat. “I’ve worked with you before. But let’s not pretend you haven’t caused more than your fair share of monsters, Chloé.”

Part of Chloé wanted to grab her bag and storm out. She wanted to say ‘fuck you, I don’t have to take this’ and go out to find a solution herself. She wanted to take the slap to the face for what it was and leave.

But a bigger part of her, including the part that _wasn’t_ her, knew that Marinette was the only person who could help right now.

_“And you also know she’s right.”_

**_Shut_ up, _I don’t need this from you right now._**

“Fine,” Chloé said, crossing her arms. “But bringing it up right now isn’t going to do much except make me prime bait for Hawk Moth, now is it?”

Marinette flinched a bit at that. Good.

“What do you remember, then?” Marinette retorted.

Chloé hesitated.

She looked down at her lap, and then off to the side. Marinette had a large mirror over her desk, and Chloé could see Queenie standing behind her, hands on Chloé’s shoulders.

She couldn’t feel those hands, but it was a comfort nonetheless.

She turned back to Marinette, took a breath, and said, “I’m not the only one in my head right now.”

Marinette blinked slowly. “Explain.”

“How much research did you do about the… weird new Paris?” Chloé asked.

“I slept in, so not much. After I got home, I had… other things to do. To prepare.”

Wow, that was a loaded sentence that Chloé wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

“Okay,” Chloé said. “So, Adrien does exist here, but he’s twenty-five.”

Marinette twitched.

Chloé forged on ahead. “He’s twenty-five, and the heroes here—there’s only three, and no Hawk Moth until yesterday—they’ve been active for about ten years. Most of what they fight is stuff like human trafficking rings and drug cartels, stuff that barely happens in our Paris, if _ever.”_

She waited a moment as Marinette held a hand up and took a deep breath, eyes closed. After a moment, she nodded, as much to herself as to Chloé, and opened her eyes again. “Okay. Keep going.”

“Right, so there’s a Chat Noir here, but his partner is… I think the Ladybug of that, uh, timeline?”

_“As good a word as any.”_

“And she goes by Crimson Vision, and I guess her look is based on this thing called a ‘two-spotted ladybird’ that I found, but nobody knows she’s got a Ladybug theme at all, so I don’t think anyone’s going to connect her to _our_ world’s Ladybug; I only got it because of Chat Noir, and the yo-yo.”

“And the third hero?”

“Goes by Riposte.”

Marinette nodded slowly. “Kagami, then.”

“The girl Adrien keeps hanging out with? The one that does fencing?”

“Yes,” Marinette said. “Riposte was the name she took during her first Akumatization.”

Oh. Weird that she remembered that. Then again, Marinette was besties with Alya Cesaire, so she probably got regaled by stories about every single Akuma there was.

“Yeah, I guess it’s probably her, then,” Chloé said. “Um… I didn’t get a chance to look up Lila, but I’m guessing she’s an adult too, or stayed behind in Italy for safety since the crime rates in this Paris are, like, super-duper high.”

“We’ll look it up later if it’s relevant,” Marinette said. “Now, you said you weren’t the only one in your head? Is it a side effect of Hawk Moth being in your head when you were Miracle Queen, or—”

“No,” Chloé snapped. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think about how she was damaging her manicure by digging her nails into the underside of the chair. “No, it’s not. It’s… the older version of me.”

“…I’m listening.”

“Uh, she’s… I woke up this morning and she was just _there._ In my head. And I panicked, because I thought she was either an Akuma, or created _by_ an Akuma, except she didn’t do anything except… anyway—”

“Except what?” Marinette asked.

“I’m allowed to have secrets, Dupain-Cheng!” Chloé snapped again. “It’s personal, okay?”

Marinette pursed her lips. She nodded. “Fine. Keep going.”

 _“Thank_ you,” Chloé snarled. “Anyway, I did some research and we figured out this, like, timeline or whatever? It doesn’t match up to my memories _or_ Queenie’s memories, but it does match up to this weird box we found in my brain that’s full of memories neither of us see as our own.”

“Okay,” Marinette said. She got up and started pacing, circling Chloé with her head down and focusing on a point beyond the floor.

Chloé made to stand and match her, but—

_“Don’t.”_

**_Why the hell not?_ **

_“She has all the power here. You said it yourself—she’s the one that knows Alya’s trick to contacting Ladybug.”_

Shit.

_“Exactly. So let her keep that power. It’s going to make her more willing to work with you if you don’t tread on her territory, so to speak. She’s probably just as anxious about all this as you are. More, even.”_

“I didn’t get an older version of myself,” Marinette said. “Or additional memories. I’m still just me.”

“Okay?”

“So is Ladybug.”

“Oh.”

Marinette stopped in front of Chloé, glaring her down, and then sighed. She put her face in her hands and groaned. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“Doing _what?”_ Chloé asked.

“I’m going to get Ladybug in on this, but I need to know I can trust you,” Marinette said. “Which means I need to do something super risky, and in order to even do that risky thing, I’m going to have to put a lot of faith in you.”

“Okay, so? Do it.”

“I’ll need to blindfold you,” Marinette said.

“Fuck no.”

A light sparked behind Marinette’s eyes. “Chloé, this isn’t a game.”

“Yeah, and I’m not letting myself get _blindfolded_ by a girl I already know hates my guts.”

“Chloé,” Marinette said. Her jaw was clenched. “I cannot emphasize to you enough how important this is. I _cannot_ trust you with the rest of the plan Ladybug has unless we do this.”

“If this is because we’ve been rivals at school—”

“It’s because you _volunteered_ to work with Hawk Moth, Chloé!”

Wh—

What.

No.

No no no no no.

Nobody was supposed to know that.

They’d locked those records up.

They _said_ it would be fine, they _promised._

“Oh, _crumbs,_ Chloé I didn’t mean to make you freak out. I can—”

“Don’t _touch me!”_

They promised they promised they said so long as she did what the courts told her they’d keep the records locked up and the news would never find out and Daddy’s reputation would stay clean and everything would be _fine._

_“Breathe, Little Bee!”_

**_I CAN’T_ **

Hesitation.

A surge of intent.

And Chloé’s body was no longer her own.

Her pulse slowed, and her breathing came under control, even though Chloé hadn’t stopped freaking out.

“Hello, Marinette,” Queenie said. “Little Bee is having a bit of a panic attack right now. Call me Queenie. Mind explaining how you know what happened? She’s rather concerned about a leak.”

“…I can’t tell you that yet,” Marinette said.

**_It was Cesaire, it had to be, she was there and they’re best friends and I made Cesaire come when I was the Miracle Queen and she must know._ **

“Was it Alya?” Queenie asked for her. “Little Bee said that she was there.”

“No,” Marinette said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “Nobody else knows. I know for… for reasons, but the knowledge is otherwise limited to Ladybug and Chat Noir, the villains, and whichever federal officials were involved.”

“Was it Ladybug?”

Marinette rubbed a hand along the back of her neck, looking away uncomfortably. “After a fashion. It’s complicated.”

“Mm, alright,” Queenie said, lounging back in her seat like it wasn’t just a normal wooden chair, thin and stiff and a tiny bit rickety. “I’m going to let Little Bee have her body back now, okay? I think she’d appreciate having a chance to freak out in peace. Maybe get some tea with honey?”

Marinette looked her over, and then nodded sharply. “Don’t touch anything. I’ll know if you do.”

Queenie smiled, and Chloé could _feel_ how fake it was. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sugar.”

As soon as the trapdoor closed, Chloé came back to her body with a gasp, almost convulsing with the feeling of gaining a body and losing control of it in the same fraction of a moment.

_“Sorry about that, Little Bee.”_

“Needed it,” Chloé gasped, and clapped her hands over her mouth in a futile attempt to get her breathing to a point that at least somewhere in the vicinity of ‘even.’

She could almost imagine Queenie rubbing circles on her back, like the older sister she never had.

The door opened up again when Chloé was most of the way to calming back down, and Marinette came in with a visibly steaming cup of tea and a box of tissues.

“I should have expected that would be a bad thing to bring up,” she admitted. “I didn’t mean to make you freak out, but I should have known not to say that, so I’m sorry for not thinking about what I said before snapping at you like that.”

**_Is that what a genuine apology is like?_ **

_“I don’t know about genuine, but it’s what a proper apology is_ shaped _like. She acknowledged that she hurt you, that the reason it hurt you was valid and that it was her fault, and apologized for doing it, not just for your feelings being hurt.”_

**_Okay. Cool. Genuine apologies feel weird._ **

_“That they do.”_

“Are you talking to… um… Queenie?” Marinette asked.

“Was it that obvious?” Chloé asked, not even ashamed of how waspish she sounded.

“Er… yes, kind of.”

“Figures,” Chloé muttered. She took a sip of the tea.

It was _good_ tea, too. Fucking hell, was there anything little miss Dupain-Cheng _wasn’t_ good at?

_“Getting Adrien’s attention.”_

Chloé snorted into her tea.

Marinette was polite enough to ignore that.

“So,” Marinette said. “I’m going to take it that you don’t like talking about that incident. I can assure you that Alya and the other drone-hit heroes from that day don’t remember what happened.”

Chloé glared at her.

“You’ve been trying to be a better person,” Marinette sighed. “I don’t know what it is about that day, but it changed you. You’re working on it. I want to trust you, but I have to cover my bases.”

“Therapy.”

“What?”

“The investigation found that, since I was a minor and my parents had been Akumatized, I was under enough stress that there was a solid argument that I was suffering a severe mental break and the majority of the blame lay with Hawk Moth, since he’s a grown-ass man and I’m a teenage girl,” Chloé said, slowly and through grit teeth. Her hands shook, but there wasn’t enough tea left to risk a spill.

“Especially after… I mean, the defense brought up videos of my mother’s interactions with me as evidence—which they didn’t warn her _or_ Daddy about—so they basically gave me a slap on the wrist. I’ve been going to court-mandated therapy twice a week since Miracle Queen happened. Daddy has to come with me twice a month right now. Mother dearest has to come once a month, but they’re… honestly they’re arguing me into recognizing how harmful she is, and they’re bringing Daddy around on that too, and I might be going no contact with her soon.”

Chloé looked up and met Marinette’s eyes. “You are the fourth person I’ve told that wasn’t legally required to know.”

“Sabrina and Adrien?” Marinette guessed.

“And Butler Jean,” Chloé said. She glared down at her tea. “He raised me more than my actual parents did. I’ve talked Sabrina into doing her own therapy, and we’re… working on our friendship. It’s not healthy for either of us, but it’s too important to let go of. I can’t get Adrien to try it, but I think that’s mostly Uncle Gabe’s fault.”

She drained the tea and set it down next to her. She met Marinette’s eyes, and lifted her chin, and tried to pretend that her eyes weren’t rimmed with red, and that her cheeks weren’t wet and splotchy and showing all the signs of what had just happened. “Is that enough for your _fucking_ trust exercise?”

Marinette’s face twitched through about five different emotions.

“If anything else were at stake… yes, absolutely. But this is Ladybug,” Marinette said. “And I’m… ugh, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m answering to powers that are beyond either of us.”

“The kwami,” Chloé guessed. “Or—wait. Shit. That old guy gave Ladybug the box, right? So… she’s in charge of… all of them.”

Marinette smiled, soft and sad and so _brittle_ in a way that didn’t hurt to look at. “Yes. She is. So you can imagine why I don’t have much of a choice in this.”

Dammit.

She could, of course.

She didn’t _want_ to. She’d just, like, spilled her soul or whatever.

But Marinette knew Ladybug, and Marinette remembered the old timeline, and Marinette staked her entire reputation every day on being the most helpful person in class.

And Marinette was one of those people that Adrien trusted probably more than he even did Chloé.

“Fine,” Chloé said. “Get your stupid blindfold.”

Marinette reached under the pillow of the chaise and pulled out a strip of fabric. She tied it around Chloé’s head, gentle and careful and ugh. Chloé didn’t want to have _positive feelings_ about Marinette. They were _rivals._

_“Keep telling yourself that, hun.”_

“Wait here,” Marinette said. “I just need to get the second part of the whole… thing we’re doing.”

Chloé stayed where she was, fists clenched tight in her lap, and tried to focus on her breathing. Footsteps went beside her and up the stairs, and then out that tiny hatch in the ceiling, and Chloé wondered if maybe she’d gotten herself in too deep.

The hatch slammed shut, and quiet feet landed in front of Chloé a scant second later. No footsteps on the stairs. What the hell.

“I’m back,” Marinette said. There was something odd about her voice. “This is going to sound so strange, but… give me your hands.”

Chloé hesitated. She held out her hands.

Marinette took them, in thin fingers covered in warm, soft leather. She pressed Chloé’s wrists together and started tying something around them. It felt like rope, the smooth and silky kind they used to tie back curtains in the hotel.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Chloé breathed. Queenie laughed in her head, and Chloé wondered if her blush was showing.

“One second,” Marinette muttered. “Okay. There.”

“Again, what the fuck are you doing?” Chloé asked.

“I borrowed something from Ladybug,” Marinette said. “Have you ever read any comics?”

“Some. I borrowed them from Adrien.”

“Any Wonder Woman?”

“A few issues.”

“Well, this is like her lasso of truth. It’s a pretty close comparison, actually, but… yeah,” Marinette said. She took a deep breath. “I’m not going to pry. I just need to make sure I can trust you.”

“Fuck you,” Chloé said, because words were all she had right now, and what she _needed_ was Ladybug. And Marinette was the one that could make that happen. “Ask your damn questions.”

“Okay,” Marinette said. Another deep breath. **“Soothsayer.”**

The rope around Chloé’s wrists grew warm.

Shit.

“Are you Chloé Bourgeois?”

“Duh.”

“Did you tell the truth, fully and without reservation, regarding your consequences following the events known as Miracle Queen?”

“Yes.”

Chloé fidgeted.

“Why did you betray Ladybug to join Hawk Moth?”

Son of a… Chloé tried to bite back the words. “Jealousy. Insecurity. I wanted to be a hero, both to help people and for the recognition.”

“Why did you want the recognition?”

“Nngh… my mother, alright? I mean, I like attention, but the reason it meant so much was my mother.”

“Why did Hawk Moth’s deal seem worth it?”

“I felt betrayed by Ladybug, especially after seeing her with the new dragon hero. Along with everything else that day, I was grasping at straws.”

“Would you do it again?”

“I don’t know.”

Marinette was quiet for a long moment. “What would it take for you to join Hawk Moth again?”

“A threat to the people I still care about, or him… showing up and offering an out when I felt like I had none. I… I’m a teenager. He’s an adult man. It does not absolve me, but it was not my fault.”

“That sounds rehearsed.”

“Therapy, Dupain-Cheng, get it through your head.”

Marinette was quiet again. “If given the chance to work with Ladybug again, would you betray her with malice aforethought?”

“No.”

“Would you betray Ladybug, or Paris, or Chat Noir, or any of the other heroes, if Hawk Moth were to offer you power?”

“No.”

“Would you do so for any selfish means or goals?”

“Only if the lives of a very, _very_ select few were in danger.”

“Can Ladybug trust you?”

“…I want her to be able to trust me.”

“Can Ladybug _trust_ you, Chloé? Can she trust you to protect Paris, to put others before yourself, to prevent Akumas instead of causing them, to prioritize the team before your own wants?”

“Yes,” Chloé finally managed to say, the rope around her hands almost burning. “Yes. Ladybug can trust me.”

“Can _I_ trust you?”

“….yes.”

“And can all the questions I asked apply to your other, older self, and still result in the same answers?”

“Yes,” Queenie said, with Chloé’s mouth and more earnestness than Chloé thought was strictly warranted.

“Okay, then,” Marinette said. She started taking off the rope. “Don’t take the blindfold off yet. Give me a minute.”

“You’re making a _lot_ of demands for someone who—”

“Two minutes, Chloé! It _will_ be worth it.”

“It better!”

Chloé crossed her arms and tried to ignore the goosebumps that crawled all over her. “Freaking Marinette Dupain-Cheng, ordering me around like she owns the place…”

_“Her parents do.”_

**_Shut up._ **

_“It’s_ her _house, Little Bee.”_

**_SHUT UP._ **

Footsteps again. Heavier breathing.

“Okay,” Marinette said, from just a foot or two past Chloé’s knees. “You can take the blindfold off.”

Chloé ripped it off, already glaring, and ready to rip Marinette a new one.

She froze, eyes on the box in Marinette’s hands.

“Is that—”

“Take it.”

Chloé reached out, hands shaking, heart quivering, eyes fucking _watering,_ and took the box that had once been so familiar.

She opened it.

That familiar flash of light hit her, and she put a hand to her mouth.

“Hello, my Queen.”

Pollen was never meant to be so subdued.

Chloé dropped the box, other hand coming up to her mouth to join the first. “I’m sorry.”

Marinette was back on the chaise, watching with the kind of careful face of someone waiting for a person to break.

“I’m sorry,” Chloé repeated, a little louder. Queenie’s words from a few minutes earlier came back, about the _shape_ of an apology. “I was—I was rude to you. I took advantage of your power in a way that I don’t—I don’t think you ever wanted me to use you that way. I hurt you, and I used you to hurt other people. I took away your free will. I’m—I’m _sorry, Pollen, I’m so sorry.”_

Pollen darted in, cuddling up against her cheek and jaw, already cooing. “I forgive you, Chloé! I could never stay angry at you—you’re amazing just the way you are, a truly worthy wielder!”

Chloé couldn’t help the tears, or the sobs, or the ugly noises she was making. At least Marinette turned away to politely do something else.

\--

“So, um, I’m guessing the whole lasso of truth situation was another miraculous?” Chloé asked.

Marinette smiled behind her cup of juice. “Barrk. Dog Miraculous. It’s not her primary power, but it’s a useful one.”

“Heroes can have more than one power?”

“Lucky Charm and Miraculous Ladybug count as two, don’t they?”

“I thought one was an extension of the other.”

Marinette shrugged. “It’s debatable.”

Chloé pulled her legs up onto the chair and hugged her knees. “So… I guess this proves you know Ladybug, if nothing else does.”

“You doubted me?”

Chloé shrugged. “How many people in Paris claim they know Ladybug personally every day?”

“I guess,” Marinette said. “I’m glad I have an ally in this.”

“What, um… what made you trust me with this? Properly, I mean?” Chloé asked. “Like, why not just wait for Ladybug to handle it? It’s been less than a day.”

Marinette stared down into her cup for a long moment, and then said, “Fluff. And Sass. They’re getting sick.”

“Who?”

“There are two miraculous with powers that relate to time,” Marinette said slowly, feeling the words out with care. “They’re sick. I thought, before… Ladybug says that if Bunnyx doesn’t show up, then it’s never that bad, because the two times we absolutely _needed_ a time traveler that knew how it all works, she showed up and helped us fix things. The world could have ended, but she knew what to do. So we thought that, you know, if she _didn’t_ show up, then we could probably fix it ourselves, you know?”

“But if the kwami are sick…” Chloé trailed off in mild horror.

Marinette nodded, looking a little sick herself. “Then there’s no telling just what’s going on. She might not be _able_ to come, and that’s even worse. So I took the risk of telling you.”

“That you know Ladybug?”

“That I _am_ Ladybug,” Marinette said.

Chloé’s heart stopped.

Marinette raised her head and looking at Chloé straight on, wearing the kind of expression that Chloé had only ever seen on Marinette’s face in the absolute worst moments. In charge. Confident. Challenging Chloé to say a word against her when _she_ knew what was going on and Chloé didn’t.

A faintly familiar little red blur floated up behind Marinette’s shoulder.

“This is Tikki,” Marinette said, gesturing upwards. “Tikki, meet Chloé. Chloé, meet Tikki. Properly, I mean, not that incident where you tried to steal her as a toy for Prince Ali’s charity.”

Chloé’s stomach turned.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuck._

_“Oh shit.”_

**_YOU’RE TELLING ME._ **

_“Oh honey, no, I mean ‘shit, I’m having sudden realizations about my own Marinette, and trust me when I say they are_ not _realizations I want to be having.’”_

Okay, well, fair.

“You are the first person to know,” Marinette said. “Not counting Bunnyx or the previous Guardian’s caretaker, and I wasn’t the one to _tell_ them. My parents do not know. Alya does not know. _Chat Noir_ doesn’t know. The _only_ reason I’m telling you this is because you are the only person I have right now, and because things have spiraled so wildly out of control that we are way, _way_ past anything to do with Hawk Moth. I need to trust you, Chloé.”

Chloé nodded mutely.

Oh god, Marinette Dupain-Cheng was Ladybug.

Chloé’s _rival_ was _Ladybug._

Chloé had been bullying her idol for four years.

Chloé’s rival whom she’d been bullying for four years had saved her life, like, fifty times.

Chloé had tried to _kill_ Marinette. _Multiple times._

Chloé was the reason Marinette was late to school so often, because _Chloé_ was the one eating up Marinette’s time by causing Akumas.

Chloé was gay for Ladybug, so that meant she was gay for Marinette.

Chloé hadn’t even _told_ anyone she was gay, except Adrien and Sabrina! She hadn’t even told Daddy or Butler Jean or her _therapist!_

_“You know, being in the closet is probably one of those things that was increasing your anxiety to the point of needing court-ordered therapy in the first place.”_

**_Please shut up, can you not see that I am having_ a crisis here?!**

_“As you were. Keep on crisis-ing it up. Marinette’s started looking at you funny, though.”_

Chloé scrambled to say something. “So what about Chat Noir? And what are you going to do about Hawk Moth?”

Marinette shoved her hand up into her bangs. “I don’t know. Chat isn’t answering my calls—he might not even recognize Ladybug unless he ended up like you—which is part of why I decided to hedge my bets on you being willing to work with me. Hawk Moth is… I think he doesn’t remember. The Akuma seemed unfocused and unpracticed. Whoever has Nooroo right now doesn’t know what they’re doing. I do, so it’s easy enough to fight down the single monsters alone, but that’s not going to last forever. I’m going to need someone to work with, if this doesn’t get resolved quickly, and with Sass and Fluff being sick, we _have_ to resolve it quickly, so I don’t get the option of waiting around and hoping for an opening.”

“Right,” Chloé said. She felt a little faint. “Are—are you asking me to be your partner?”

 _“Temporary_ partner,” Marinette stressed. “Chat Noir is my partner. Always will be. But I can work with Queen Bee, too.”

 _“We might need a new look and code name, in case someone_ does _recognize us as your former self.”_

Chloé relayed Queenie’s suggestion, and Marinette frowned. She pulled out a sketchbook, and poised the pencil to start sketching. “Tell me anything you want or need. The kwami can adjust your suit if needed, but it helps to have something in mind first.”

“Oh, um, I mean, it has to look different from my previous costume, so maybe more solid color blocking? Or fuzz, since some bees are—”

There was a knock on the roof door.

Marinette met Chloé’s eyes.

The balcony exit wasn’t locked.

The balcony exit was also, for the record, _very difficult_ to access from the outside, but that didn’t stop break-ins when it came to this run-down new Paris they were stuck in.

A man’s voice called faintly from above. “Marinette? Marinette Dupain-Cheng?”

“Who are you?” Marinette called back, voice full of power and confidence and _fuck,_ now was _not_ the time to be thinking these thoughts.

Tikki nudged Marinette a few times, and Chloé’s ears caught the little whisper of, “Spots on” before her eyes caught the pink flutter of a transformation light.

“Buzz on.”

The door on the ceiling opened slowly. Both girls readied their weapons.

A familiar blonde head with black mask lowered in.

Chat Noir grinned, upside down and crooked and _familiar_ despite his age. “Chloé. Bugaboo. Glad I’m not the only one stuck in this mess. Any idea what’s going on?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote 5k in under four hours eyyyyyy


	5. BEHOLD: BANANA NOIR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien: I can't believe this kid brought a banana costume to a miraculous fight.
> 
> Also Adrien: You mean your university DOESN'T regularly almost kill several dozen students because someone forgot a safety regulation?
> 
> (In which the author finally taps the comedy spring.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: references to various real-world extreme crimes (human trafficking, drug smuggling, mobs, etc.), references to an adult's sex life, references to some mental health issues
> 
> Despite this, the humor's finally back!

Adrien couldn’t sleep.

He stared at the ceiling, trying to count speckles in the paint between the breaths of the woman next to him, and then gave it up as a lost cause.

He leveraged himself out of bed, trying not to groan as the crick in his shoulder ached. Five years and it was still reminding him of what it was to get hurt without his partner. He grabbed the thin sheet he used so he wouldn’t have to deal with overheating under Marinette’s triple-fluffed comforter, wrapped it around his shoulders like a pale imitation of a cape, and padded out of the room.

A minute or so later, just enough time to fill up a bottle of water and go to another room, he was sitting on the window bench and staring out at Paris. One leg up to rest his arm on. One leg swinging off the seat. Bathed in moonlight. Would have been a great shot for… hm, cologne, probably.

“I should have gone into advertising,” he muttered.

Plagg opened one eye and snorted. He closed it.

“I know you’re awake,” Adrien said, voice still low, but maybe lilting a little. He was feeling poetic. He took a sip of water. “I thought cats were supposed to sleep _more_ than humans.”

“I gave you night vision, kid, not a cure for insomnia,” Plagg said. He curled in a little more on his tiny pillow of a bed. “Deal with it.”

Adrien ran a hand through his hair and groaned. Tomorrow’s lecture was going to be hell if he couldn’t at least squeeze a nap in. Quantum Mechanics was tricky at the best of times, let alone on no sleep. Marinette was probably going to be stressed as the devil himself after _she_ got off work—he was pretty sure there was a deadline coming up for an accessories line, if he’d been paying enough attention to what she said—and that meant hitting the red light district with blades drawn and targets listed.

“Isn’t the other one getting home tomorrow?”

Adrien buried his face in his hands. “Don’t remind me. I’m not going to be running on enough sleep to deal with them together.”

“You’re the one that thought dating them was a good idea.”

“It _is_ a good idea! I’m just really, really not looking forward to fighting the Spanish mob again.”

“How do you know it’s the Spaniards again?”

“There’s a red flag pinned on the city map where we think the headquarters are.”

Plagg was quiet for a moment. “She’s doing that thing with the strings again?”

“Did she ever stop?” Adrien asked drily. He sighed. “We’ve got someone up on that end. Officer Raincomprix is willing to cooperate with us to get some arrests made instead of the risking them going off-grid or something. Minor problems compared to Madame Germaine’s attempts to start up the cocaine smuggling from Nice again, but we don’t have an angle of attack on that yet.”

Plagg floated over and curled upon Adrien’s shoulder. “Your girls are crazier than a bag of cats, and I’d know.”

“Hey, rude,” Adrien said, but there wasn’t much heat to it. “It’s not like we can _see_ anyone about it.”

“Didn’t you try convincing CV you could? Literally last night?”

Adrien shrugged. “She wasn’t wrong about the risks, and I’m not going to press after the first shut-down on arguments like this. If Marinette immediately argues back the way she did, I’m going to take the point she makes and back down until next time. She’s right that one bad background check could mean enemies suddenly knowing the day identities behind Crimson Vision and Chat Noir.”

“Not Riposte?”

“I mean, honestly, Kagami can handle herself. I don’t think she needs a shrink. She’s scary, but she’s not the same kind of… unstable as me and Marinette,” Adrien said. “Though they could probably just guess, tee-bee-eich.”

“Stop pretending to be American, it’s _annoying.”_

“It’s _slang.”_

Plagg groaned dramatically and burrowed into the folds of Adrien’s sheet cape.

Adrien looked out over the city and was suddenly struck by the urge to say, “I ever tell you about the time I asked Mari if I should take up smoking?”

“I was there. She yelled at you about being stupid, and you told her that it would just be so you could brood properly when you felt sad about your tragic backstory, and then Stabby started yelling at you too.”

“I mean, I’d look good, though.”

“Stick with the lollipops, kid,” Plagg drawled. “Like that artist from your first year of uni when you decided to try older men. He’s the one that got you started on enough sugar to make Tikki gag, anyway.”

“Theo was only three years older than me, it’s _not_ a lot.”

“He sculpted your ass.”

“He didn’t _know_ it was my ass!” Adrien protested. “Nobody did!”

“Man, I’m glad you and CV got together.” Plagg rolled his eyes. “Way less whining.”

“Plagg.”

“And you’re done faster with the rutting, too.”

 _“Plagg!”_ Adrien hissed.

“What? It’s true. Only one of you needs—hey, put me down!”

Adrien wrapped Plagg up in the sheet like a burrito and idly wondered how long it would be before Plagg got bored of playing along and just phased out. Maybe if he j

u

S

t̻͍̑͛ͥ̂̿ͧ̌

?͉̜̥̻͙̝̺ͪͤ̎

Adrien’s head swam.

He grabbed blindly for the edge of the wall and missed, falling towards the floor and crashing in a tangle of limbs and fabric. Part of him wondered if Marinette would hear and come streaking in with her stabbing fan. Part of him wondered _why_ Marinette would hear at all.

His stomach heaved, but nothing came up.

Trying to get up proved futile, so Adrien lay in place, eyes screwed shut and head pounding, for a few long minutes as his brain continued to send mixed signals about what, exactly, was wrong. Had someone finally figured out who Chat Noir was and tried to poison him?

It wouldn’t be the _first_ attempted poisoning, just the first since he stopped being the face of the Gabriel brand.

 _Fuck,_ he wished Kagami was here right now. She was the one that studied all this medical stuff in her spare time.

_“What’s going on?”_

The voice was young. Scared. Familiar.

Adrien was a little more concerned that he was hearing voices than he was with comforting said voices, honestly.

He managed to peel his eyes open enough to stare across the floor. “Nngh… Plagg?”

A vague grumbling met his ears.

“Plagg, ‘m hearin’ things.”

 _“Wait. You know Plagg? Wait, did I_ time-travel _to another Chat or something? What year is it? Is this an Akuma’s fault? Or is it just a dream? Is there a Guardian I could talk to?”_

Adrien wanted this voice, young as it sounded, to maybe quiet down a bit.

_“I’m fifteen.”_

So, like, practically a toddler. Hello, toddler who was in Adrien’s head. Please go away.

 _“Also…_ I’m _Adrien. And if you know who Plagg is, and we have the same name, then we’re probably the same person, but at different ages.”_

That made sense. He didn’t want it to. He had enough shit to deal with after Marinette decided they were going after the Spanish mob again. And Madame Germaine’s. And probably the smugglers from an as-of-yet-unidentified part of North Africa that thought they were clever by using the catacombs. And also the brothel in Monsier Matte’s (fake name, very obvious, nobody called him out on it because the last time someone had, they’d gotten their head caved in with a decorative cane that had a human hip bone for a handle) had started up their shit again, so he had to deal with _that_ too.

_“A what?”_

This kid didn’t know what a brothel was.

Okay.

Uh.

Right, no, he wasn’t anywhere near drunk enough to deal with this. His head was pounding less, though, so at least that was nice.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position and grimaced. His sense of balance was returning, however slowly, but everything felt off, like his limbs were simultaneously too long and too short, and also a lot like it was time to throw up.

“Oh, Tikki’s going to _kill_ me.”

Adrien tried to focus on Plagg’s voice, but he was still seeing double. He rubbed at his eyes, and looked again, and his vision cleared.

Nope.

There were still two Plaggs.

“Please tell me I’m hallucinating,” Adrien whispered.

(If Marinette hadn’t woken up, he wasn’t going to be the one to _make_ her wake up.)

_“Wait, if you’re an older me, are you and Marinette… roommates?”_

“Kid, what did you do?” Plagg demanded. Adrien wasn’t entirely clear on which one.

 _“Me?_ What did _I_ do?” he asked in what he felt was entirely justified aghastment. Was that a word? Probably not. He didn’t care.

“Why are there two of me?”

“Is it another time-traveling Akuma? Man, I _hate_ those ones!”

“An Akuma? We haven’t had an Akuma in two hundred years, dummy!”

“Dummy? You’re the dummy!”

 _“You know, I didn’t think it could get worse, but it did.”_ The teenager in his head said.

Adrien wondered if there was a way to, like. Make this all stop.

“This is a dream,” he said out loud. “I finally managed to fall asleep and this is the hell I’m being punished with. God saw that I had the audacity to go against my insomnia and thought it was time to play a prank. I knew my hubris would be my undoing, but I never thought it would be for hoping I could crawl into the gentle arms of Hypnos and his beloved Pasithea.”

Both Plaggs paused to stare at him.

“You been watching that alchemy show again?” one of them asked.

“I mean, let’s be real, horrifying dreams about having my teenage self yeeted into my head is probably better than, like, losing a limb because I tried and failed to bring my mom back to life, right?”

 _“At least there’s no brother to accidentally sacrifice,”_ the teenager offered.

“The teenager in my head agrees,” Adrien said. “Also, hi, I’m panicking on the inside. Either of you know what’s going on?”

“Do I look like I know what’s going on?” A Plagg asked, just a little too loud.

“Shhh!” Adrien hissed. “You’re going to wake Marinette up!”

“Marinette? The bakery girl?” a Plagg asked. Presumably not his Plagg, because _his_ Plagg referred to Marinette as ‘CV’ or ‘that terrifying monster from my nightmares who somehow managed to convince Tikki she was the best thing on the planet.’

It wasn’t a fair assessment, because Marinette was an absolute sweetheart when she wasn’t strangling human traffickers or sending mob bosses to the hospital.

_“The Marinette I know doesn’t do that.”_

“Then you’re lucky,” Adrien muttered.

“Hey, hey, answer the question!” One of the Plaggs said, flying up into his face. “Why are you an adult? And in the same apartment as the bakery girl? You live together or something?”

“Uh, no, just staying the night,” Adrien said. “I’ve got a place across town.”

 _“Oh, I thought you were roommates,”_ the teenager said. _“Marinette’s a good friend, though. I don’t think I’d mind being roommates with her!”_

The Plaggs are staring at him.

“There’s a teenager in my head,” Adrien told them. Again? Probably again. “Saying that he’d be happy to be roommates with Marinette.”

One of the Plaggs shuddered in barely-concealed horror. Cool. That one was his, then. Adrien kept talking, because talking meant he was doing something, even if that something wasn’t, like, actually helping the situation.

“Honestly I’m just thinking ‘really? You sure about that?’ because, don’t get me wrong, I love Marinette, but she’s… you know, kinda nuts.”

“All three of you are,” the shuddering-in-horror Plagg muttered.

Adrien ignored him.

“Why _are_ you staying the night?” the other Plagg asked. “You get stuck out late or something? Late night bender?”

 _“Your car broke down?”_ The teenager asked.

Adrien stared at the wall, trying to figure out how to explain this without traumatizing a child.

“They’re rutting,” his own Plagg said.

“Boring,” the other Plagg declared.

_“What’s rutting?”_

Adrien opened his mouth. Closed it. He continued staring at the wall with what he was fairly sure was a look of concern and disturbed pain.

“Dating,” Adrien finally said. “We’re dating.”

_“Oh. Huh, I never thought of Marinette that way.”_

Adrien pursed his lips. That tracked. He hadn’t thought of her that way either until lycée. They hadn’t actually even started dating properly until Kagami joined the team…

_“What team?”_

**_Uh, the… the Miraculous one?_** Adrien thought in the child’s vague direction. **_I mean, Mari and I are the only ones with Miraculous, but Kagami figured a sword was just as good, so…_**

_“MARINETTE HAS A MIRACULOUS?!”_

Oh.

Oh… no…

_“Wait no you can’t just—is she Ladybug? SHE’S LADYBUG?!”_

“Nope,” Adrien said. He got to his feet. “Nope, not having this conversation here. Not having this conversation, actually. I’m going home, getting some sleep, getting rid of whatever hallucination is torturing me with a few hours of shut-eye, and doing some quantum physics in the morning.”

_“WE’RE DATING LADYBUG?”_

“No, _I’m_ dating _Crimson Vision,”_ Adrien snarked. “From the way you’re talking kid, it doesn’t sound like you’re dating _anyone.”_

 _“I… went on a date with Kagami,”_ the teenager grumbled.

“Cool. So did I. Still do. Plagg, Claws—uh. Plaggs? Um. Huh.” Adrien looked down at his ring. Just one. “Is this going to get both of you, or…?”

The Plaggs looked at each other, and then back at Adrien. They shrugged. “Only one way to find out!”

“Plagg, claws out!”

_“Wait, so is Crimson Vision your Ladybug?”_

“Not having this conversation, kid,” Adrien muttered.

_“Okay but—uh. Hey. Hey, I can feel Plagg.”_

“You wh—no. Nope. Going home, taking a nap, and—and I only got one of you.”

The Plagg in front of him raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, you did.”

“…nope, too tired for this. Going home. Will cry about it in the morning.”

And he did.

\--

“Okay,” Adrien said. “So I’m pretty sure _my_ timeline and _your_ timeline are separate. I don’t think I’m _your_ future, just the future of a timeline that’s parallel to yours.”

_“How do you figure?”_

“Because I never went to public school,” Adrien said. “I went straight from homeschooled to university.”

Someone gave him a strange look, and Adrien smiled apologetically, and turned his head to tap a Bluetooth earpiece where they could see. The expression cleared and they nodded with the kind of commiserating grimace of a fellow student who hated phone calls with all the rage of their generation.

Bluetooth earpieces were a _great_ cover for talking to one’s self, and Adrien had gotten used to it as a cover for talking to Plagg over the past few years.

 _“Oh, okay,”_ teenage Adrien said. _“Still something we probably need Bunnyx to look at, though. Normally when something goes weird like this, Hawk Moth is coming after us with an Akuma and it’s really visible and loud. But there aren’t any Akumas running around right now, so it’s probably something weirder, right?”_

“I mean, probably,” Adrien muttered. “Any idea how to contact this specialist?”

_“Uh… no? I’ve only met her once, and she was in a statue in the Louvre.”_

“Wait… _in_ a statue?”

_“Yeah, she was asleep in there for a few thousand years.”_

Huh.

That was.

Hm.

…Adrien decided that wasn’t his problem, or his business. He didn’t want to touch that, and seeing as it was over, he probably didn’t have to.

 _“We probably won’t find her there this time,”_ teenage Adrien confirmed.

“Okay,” Adrien sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Mini-me—can I call you mini-me?”

_“Uh, I’m not… super happy with that? But it’s what Bunnyx calls her younger self, so I guess.”_

“Is there something you’d like better?”

_“…Bananoir.”_

“What.”

_“Never mind. It’s a weird inside joke.”_

“No, no, now I need to know. What is Bananoir?”

_“Well, Master Fu took our Miraculouses back during the whole thing with the rogue Sentimonster—”_

The what.

_“—and then I had to go get it back, because Master Fu was trying to protect us, but it was a really bad way to do it and everyone was just in more danger because he was like two hundred years old and his back was giving out—”_

Yes, okay, Adrien had met his Master Fu. The man was old as dirt.

_“—and I couldn’t just go out as myself, but I still had the costume I’d grabbed during Kwamibuster—”_

During what now?

 _“—and it covers up everything about me, and there’s padding, so I figured it wasn’t the_ worst _option, so I just put it on and went after him.”_

“And where does the Banana bit come in?”

_“Oh, yeah. It was a Mr. Banana costume.”_

A…

A Mr. Banana.

“Like the mascot?”

_“Yeah, they left it out and I needed a costume, so I borrowed it. And then I was going to keep it, but that would be stealing, so I bought my own.”_

“You f—you bought the Mr. Banana costume.”

_“I like it! It’s fun, and it’s dumb, and Father would never let me keep something like that normally, but like… it’s fun, you know? It makes me happy to own.”_

Well, yeah, sure, but like. Mr. Banana.

“You know what? You do you, kid.” Adrien rubbed at his forehead. “And you just called yourself Bananoir after this?”

_“Actually, Ladybug said she’d call me Banana Noir if I didn’t stop making puns about the situation. Joke’s on her, though, I actually love it.”_

Of course he did.

“Okay, then. Banana Noir or Bananoir?”

_“Wait, really?”_

“I gotta call you something, kid. Pick a name.”

_“Banana Noir it is!”_

God.

This fucking kid.

“Okay,” Adrien said, because this entire conversation was just. Exhausting. “Okay, we’re just going to table this entire situation about the names, because everything about you is making me tired.”

_“Huh. Am I gonna be this tired when I get old?”_

“I’m not old!”

_“You’re kinda old.”_

Adrien wanted to bury his face in his hands and scream. He didn’t, because doing that would get someone suggesting he visit the university’s counseling service _again,_ and he’d already gotten that conversation three times this month. He didn’t want another staged intervention. There were too many of those already.

This was normal for students his age and year, he’d been told. He was far from the only person getting these conversations. He just… got them a little more often.

“Anyway,” Adrien said, because this was neither the time nor the place for a breakdown. “Alternate timelines, smooshed together. You mentioned a Bunnyx?”

_“Yeah, she has Fluff, the rabbit kwami.”_

“How many active Miraculous are there in your timeline?”

 _“Um… all of them?”_ Banana Noir hedged. _“Or like, almost all of them? Hawk Moth has Nooroo and Duusuu. Ladybug and I have Tikki and Plagg. Pretty much all the others were with Master Fu for safekeeping, but he transferred Guardianship to Ladybug a few weeks ago.”_

So that was… two active in the field, two in enemy hands, and the remaining fifteen in the hands of a teenager.

“Only Tikki and Plagg are active here,” he said, instead of breaking down, because that many active tiny gods was a recipe for disaster. “Master Fu was around and had Wayzz, but he had to go into hiding a few years back. We’re not sure where he is right now.”

 _“Huh. He could probably help if he was here, but I guess that’s not an option,”_ Banana Noir said.

Adrien was starting to regret the nickname choice. It was very hard to take this kid seriously even _without_ the stupid name. It was also kind of a mouthful.

“Okay,” Adrien said. “So I need to dig out my string theory books.”

_“How many do you have?”_

“I’m doing a master’s degree in quantum mechanics, so more than most people would think is reasonable,” Adrien said. “We don’t have a Hawk Moth, at least, so we can rest easy knowing that most of our villains are just the run of the mill nonsense.”

_“You mentioned the kind of stuff I see in old gangster movies, right?”_

…sure. Gangster movies.

Totally not Adrien’s everyday life, nope.

“Anyway, no active kwami in the last two hundred years other than the three I listed,” Adrien said. “You said Fluff has to do with time, right? Are there any others like that?”

_“Fluff is jumping through time, Sass is a do-over of up to five minutes, but I don’t think he gives the user the same kind of ‘understanding of the universe’ or whatever.”_

“Makes sense,” Adrien said. “I think… I think I can probably run this past my advisor as a theoretical exercise. I’d need to do a lot of research on my own first, but she’ll probably be willing to play around with the numbers with me if I phrase it correctly.”

He dug out his phone, letting Banana Noir—this was the _worst_ decision—keep up a running commentary in the background about various Miraculous, and…

“Shut up a second.”

Banana Noir obliged with the shutting up request.

Nobody was in his phone.

Scratch that.

Reverse a bit.

Back up.

Analysis:

Marinette was in his phone. Kagami was in his phone. His university classmates and professors were in his phone.

Nino was missing. Alya was missing. Chloé was missing.

Almost all of the friends he’d met _through_ Marinette? Gone.

Search engine. Nino Lahiffe: a few hits. A YouTube channel and SoundCloud. A few songs, but nothing close to what Adrien knew of him in terms of quantity.

Scrap it. Next person.

Alya Cesaire: a FaceBook account. Too young. Next result. White girl in Rennes. White girl in Lyon. Asian girl in Nice. Black girl in Marseille. White girl in Paris. None of them the Alya he knew. No results with any of the journals she worked with.

Scrap it. Next person.

Chloé Bourgeois: Mayor’s daughter. Fifteen years old. Right appearance for the age, but that age was, in and of itself, wrong.

Disconnect located. Presumed location of friends: collége.

Fuck.

 _“So… it’s not just that my brain got tossed into yours across timestreams,”_ Banana Noir said.

“No,” Adrien said. “It’s not.”

He stared down at his phone for a few long moments, and then opened his bag. He glared at Plagg and Plagg. “I’m blaming you for this.”

“Blaming me? For what?!”

“This. All of this. You’re bad luck and you know it,” Adrien said. One of the Plaggs took a moment to look offended. He wasn’t sure which one it was. He mugged down at the tiny god anyway.

Said tiny god mugged back.

Adrien shut his bag and stood up. Belatedly, he noticed a girl on the next bench over staring at him.

He vaguely recognized her from an English course he’d taken his first year.

He waved at her.

She was suddenly very interested in her salad.

\--

Adrien didn’t necessarily have the best reputation at school.

This was _emphatically_ not his fault.

He maintained this whenever his father or Nathalie asked about it.

The thing was, Adrien was a STEM major. Not only that, Adrien was doing _grad school_ for STEM. As far as the other students were concerned, this was a warning sign in and of itself, a symbol of how he’d eventually try to become a supervillain, and break them down for parts or blow up a building or maybe just have a breakdown and draw genitalia on all the windows of the humanities library before getting escorted off campus to a mental hospital for the sake of his nerves.

Adrien was only a little offended by the fact that being a STEM major came with such a stigma. _He_ hadn’t done any of that. Valérian Roux had done that, but that was five years ago, and the man himself was now running a bakery in the countryside and, from what Mlle. Plourde said, blocked calls from the university staff, students, and even his parents if they ever brought up going back to school.

Adrien kind of missed the guy. He’d been great at impersonations.

As it was, the theoretical physics hallway was quiet in comparison to the occasional explosions from the engineers, the intermittent screaming from the biologists, or the weekly evacuations of the entire building, which the chem students were almost entirely responsible for.

_“Do you have a grudge against the chemists or something?”_

“No,” Adrien said. “We all have a grudge against the business majors.”

“Hear hear,” the girl across the hall muttered, eyes on her textbook.

“Especially the accountants,” Adrien tacked on after a moment.

 _“Fuck_ accountants!” a guy sitting in the corner with a binder balanced on his knees said. He did not look up from the binder.

 _“So that’s… a whole thing, then,”_ Banana Noir said. _“You know, I don’t think I heard anything about the Sorbonne Université being like this back in my dimension?”_

“Really?” Adrien asked. He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. He put a finger up to his Bluetooth to reinforce the idea that he was not, in fact, talking to himself, but actually on a _very_ important phone call. “The science department is kind of famous for this sort of thing here. I remember an entire wing getting blown up when I was twelve. It was all over the news. Father actually asked me to look into going abroad for school, but I wanted to stick with Paris.”

 _“Yeah, no, that didn’t happen in my timeline,”_ baby Adrien said. He sounded a little ill. _“Uh, does that… does that sort of thing happen a lot?”_

“Blowing up the entire wing? Not really. Blowing up an entire room? Probably at least once a semester.” Adrien shoved open a door with his shoulder and meandered his way to a seat. “But the chem students are the ones to watch out for. I hear they melted through the floor in one of the inorganic labs again.”

Banana Noir was silent.

“We had to evacuate the whole building because they fumes they caused by burning through the linoleum were toxic.”

_“This building scares me now.”_

“Really? Even with everything Plagg lets you do?”

_“I can control Plagg. I can’t control…”_

“Overenthusiastic undergrads with access to highly corrosive chemicals and not enough sleep?”

_“Yes.”_

“Yeah, well, you get used to it.”

Adrien was answered with the vague sensation of an annoyed expression.

That was fine.

 _“So why_ do _they blow things up?”_

“Because they can,” Adrien said. “And because sometimes they get too excited to follow safety regulations, and then all of us suffer.”

_“How important are those safety regulations?”_

“Important enough that forgetting one can lead to death, blindness, infertility, sudden supervillainy, or sentient polyester.”

 _“Wait, wait, wait… I thought you said you didn’t_ have _supervillains. You said it was human trafficking and drugs and stuff.”_

Adrien grimaced. “Well, usually. We definitely don’t have Miraculous-powered supervillains, but sometimes you get people who just… snap and go a different direction. Had a guy last year who was in a chemical explosion and got some pyrokinesis out of the deal.”

_“Whoa.”_

“Yeah, he… uh… he didn’t last long,” Adrien admitted. “Turns out controlling the elements is exhausting as hell, and he had to have fuel around him to get anything going for actual impressive displays. Still useful, but he got taken out in under three weeks, I think. He’s in counselling now and looking into a position with a wildfire management team out in the United States. You know when people do that whole controlled burning thing so we don’t get hit by the really big stuff that kills people? Okay, yeah, you do, so like… _stopping_ fires, or at least limiting them, is a lot easier than using them to menace people for this guy, and the Americans looked at that and the criminal record and decided they’d use him to save California.”

Actually, that was a good reminder. Adrien was pretty sure he—or at least Chat Noir—owed Jacque a congratulations card for finishing up the forestry undergrad program and turning his life around.

 _“You know, I’m almost_ glad _I just have to deal with Hawk Moth now,”_ Banana Noir said, just a little faint of heart. Poor kid. _“Like, it’s a different villain every time, but the modus operandi is always the same, right? And the goal? You guys have an entire rogues gallery.”_

Adrien blinked. Did he? None of the fun villains really stuck around that long. The long-term villains were less ‘rogues gallery’ and more ‘oh god someone stop them before they sell another dozen teenage girls to a questionable business in another country.’

He kind of wished the fun ones stuck around a bit longer. He’d prefer fighting another Phillipe-with-the-snake-hair over Mlle. Faustier-with-the-fifty-gunmen.

Phillipe had been fun.

_“Fun how?”_

Adrien’s brain stalled out.

Uh.

Hm.

Was this a question he wanted to answer?

Not really.

_“Wait what are you—EW. EW EW EW.”_

**_Oh god, I didn’t want you to see that._ **

_“WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT.”_

**_Because I’m horny? I wanted to experiment? Marinette and I took a few years off so we could figure ourselves out and I realized I liked boys as much as girls?_ **

_“THAT DOESN’T EXPLAIN THE SNAKES.”_

**_I DIDN’T WANT YOU TO SEE THAT._ **

_“WHY WERE YOU EVEN THINKING ABOUT THAT?”_

**_I DON’T KNOW. BECAUSE WE MENTIONED FUN BAD GUYS??? I DIDN’T KNOW YOU’D SEE THAT._ **

_“I’M KINKSHAMING.”_

**_TRUST ME, NOBODY WANTED YOU TO SEE THAT AS LITTLE AS I DID. I GENUINELY DIDN’T—wait, you know what kinkshaming is but you don’t know what a brothel is?_ **

_“This isn’t about me, this is about you being nasty.”_

**_We’re the same person._ **

_“I refuse to believe that in light of the SNAKES.”_

**_Literally nobody wanted you to see the snakes._ **

_“Are you su—"_

**_YOU ARE FIFTEEN. I WANTED TO EXPOSE YOU TO NOTHING._ **

_“I MEAN, FAIR. BUT ALSO. YOUR SEX LIFE.”_

**_STOP ASKING ABOUT IT AND I’LL GET TO STOP THINKING ABOUT IT._ **

_“THINK ABOUT MATH THEN. I THINK YOUR CLASS IS STARTING.”_

Oh hey.

Tiny Adrien was right.

Class _was_ starting.

_“Please stop calling me Tiny Adrien. Or Baby Adrien. I gave you a perfectly cromulent name to use.”_

**_Counterpoint: Banana Noir is a mouthful and it is_ incredibly _hard to take you seriously._**

_“Yeah, and? Being taken seriously is boring. I’d rather make people laugh.”_

Well, okay. Adrien could totally get that.

**_Still a mouthful._ **

_“Okay, but I don’t want to be called a kid.”_

**_You_ are _a kid._**

Adrien started taking down some notes. He idly wondered if anyone had even noticed his partial meltdown. Probably not.

Oh hey. He’d figured out how to actually _talk_ to the kid.

Hadn’t he figured that out last night?

…maybe?

Adrien wasn’t actually sure he remembered last night at _all,_ but that was just how sleep deprivation worked sometimes. The deeply unhealthy energy drinks could only do so much.

Maybe he’d figure out how to _not_ talk to the kid, because he really, really, _really_ didn’t want to be sharing memories of his sex history. The kid had barely caught the edge of one and he’d been basically traumatized.

_“I’m not traumatized.”_

**_I mean, basically you are._ **

Underage Adrien—Underadrien!—probably had a comeback. Adrien was sure he did.

That said, Adrien got a text right that moment and proceeded to have a tiny panic attack when he opened the link.

Just a tiny one.

It was the video’s fault, really. He could blame Nadja Chamack.

 _“That’s Ladybug,”_ Underadrien told him.

**_Yeah, no, I figured._ **

The girl was definitely a teenager. She was definitely a Ladybug. She had exactly the hairstyle that Marinette was rocking in all the photos he’d seen of her at that age.

And she’d just fought an Akuma. There was video footage and everything.

Shit.

He clicked out of the video and back to the text

> **From: Marinette  
> ** We need to do something about this.  
>  ** _https://youtu.be/oHg5SJYRHA0_**

Adrien wanted to swear a bit more.

He had to set a good example for the teenager in his head, though.

_“I know bad words!”_

**_Name one._ **

_“Motherfucker.”_

Well.

Someone had definitely been watching too much American film.

> **From: Adrien  
> ** Can I ask you to trust me?
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Of course

Adrien sighed, checked the professor was still distracted, and then jumped a little as his phone buzzed again.

> **From: Marinette  
> ** That said, the question DOES worry me a little.
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** I have a lead on what’s going on. The kid in the costume is almost definitely on our side and willing to work with us, just a little lost and confused.
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Okay.  
> And the ‘monster’ she was fighting? Tikki says she’s worried.
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** I promise I’m on that problem too. Just let me reach out some feelers?  
> Also I need to ask you some weird questions because there’s some reality weirdness going on that might actually hit me right in the quantum feels.
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Mm… okay, kitten.

_“Kitten?”_ Underadrien asked. _“Ladybug calls me that too.”_

**_Uh… you know what, yeah, that tracks._ **

_“Why do you sound uncomfortable?”_

**_You don’t want an answer to that one._ **

> **From: Adrien  
> ** Cool.  
> Name of your best friend in collége?
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Alya Cesaire
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Her boyfriend?
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Nino Lahiffe
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Okay, now I need you to NOT go nuts when you check this last one because I almost did  
> And I know you can get a little… intense
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Wow, rude  
> Fine, ask the question  
> I’ll refrain from acting until I have your info
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Awesome  
> I love you  
> Are either of them in your contacts list?

Marinette didn’t answer.

Adrien closed his eyes and tried to refocus on the lecture. He even managed it, for a few minutes.

And then his phone buzzed again.

> **From: Marinette  
> ** What the FUCK is going on
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** You said you would trust me
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Yeah okay I said that  
> Give me some goddamn spoilers  
> The only evidence I’m finding of my BEST FRIEND even existing is a Facebook page for a FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD  
> Is this time fuckery  
> Is this why you mentioned quantum stuff
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Kind of  
> It’s complicated  
> What I CAN tell you is that someone probably found the butterfly miraculous  
> And that we can almost definitely trust ‘Ladybug’
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** See, that’s confusing, because the Ladybug Miraculous is WITH ME
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** I know  
> I love you  
> I’ll explain everything once I have all the pieces  
> I’m investigating as soon as I get out of class  
> Can I please trust you to let me handle this one for now?
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** I trust you  
> I’ll hold off for now, and I’ll convince Kagami the same  
> How long until I can expect answers?
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Don’t know yet  
> I’ll give you an ETA on info later today  
> Oh, one more thing: do you recognize Ladybug at all?
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Vaguely familiar but no dice  
> If there’s a connection, the glamour’s blocking it
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Okay, cool.  
> I need two more things from you.  
> Please.
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** That worries me but shoot
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Don’t contact your parents  
> Don’t try to initiate any affection with me
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** God you better have a REALLY good explanation at the end of this, Agreste  
> Fine.  
> ADRIEN  
> Their numbers aren’t in my phone either and I can’t remember them.  
> Adrien I’ve had their number memorized for years.  
> I can’t even remember my childhood address.  
> What the FUCK is going on.
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Oh shit I didn’t realize it would be that bad

_“That’s bad.”_

**_NO SHIT, KID._ **

> **From: Adrien  
> ** Things will be back to normal soon  
> I actually do remember where your parents’ house is  
> Please don’t look them up or it’s gonna be like the Alya thing  
> Shit’s weird
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Fine  
> And the affection rule?
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Something related but also much more stupid. Long story short, I shouldn’t even be THINKING about sex or anything sex-related until a certain issue is handled.
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** Dammit Agreste  
> You’re lucky you’re cute  
> I’ll tell Kagami and I’ll follow the requests. Won’t pursue the Ladybug thing, won’t try to contact my parents, won’t try to get you into bed.  
> Can I look into this Hawk Moth thing?
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** PLEASE do  
> I don’t have a lead on that part
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** I’ll clear a whiteboard
> 
> **From: Adrien  
> ** Thanks
> 
> **From: Marinette  
> ** I love you  
> Be safe

Adrien was smiling down at his phone, looking like a fool and knowing it, and then there was a scraping of chairs and he realized class was over.

Well.

He’d… read up on it later. Henrietta might have been willing to lend some notes.

\--

Adrien’s classes didn’t end until four-thirty, well after the point where Francois-Dupont and most other public schools let out, and he lost a few minutes to getting across town without raising any red flags. Kagami texted him at one point, but it was just a handful of short questions about the situation.

She didn’t remember Nino or Alya, and she and Marinette had decided this information was probably relevant to whatever Adrien was doing. Adrien thanked her for the info, asked how her flight was, and then quietly ducked into a dark corner to have a conniption.

Both Plaggs laughed at him. He did not cuss them out, because he had an example to set for the young’un.

Banana Noir laughed at him, and Adrien tried not to scream.

He was having a bit of a day.

Everything was fine.

It was _fine._

_“You don’t sound fine.”_

**_Please. I am begging you. Shut up._ **

_“Wow, what a way to talk to a kid, amiright?”_

**_Thought you didn’t like being called a kid._ **

_“I don’t, but if you insist on calling me one, I can only be swept along by the currents of fate to act like one.”_

God, Adrien was a _sassy_ little shit. He didn’t remember being this sassy. Maybe he could blame the fact that Tiny Adrien didn’t have to worry about getting in trouble with Nathalie or his dad. Also the general stress of this hell of a situation.

Adrien entered Tom & Sabine’s with a light, carefree smile on his face, one that was more model than man, but was pleasant and unassuming and, most importantly, did _not_ suggest to people that he was about to murder the shit out of them.

He’d had a smile like that for a year or two. Marinette had said it made him look hot, and he’d gleefully gone along with it until he realized he’d accidentally made a guy piss himself before he even _did_ anything beyond, like, showing up.

And smiling.

_“Why does your Marinette like a murder smile?”_

**_Because my Marinette, bless her heart, is a violent bag of neuroses who’s paranoid as hell and got a few wires crossed back when were still figuring the whole vigilante thing out._ **

_“Oh. Okay, then.”_

Yeah, that was probably the right track to take.

Asking too many questions about CV’s mental health never went anywhere good. Asking too many questions about Riposte’s mental health was similarly a bad idea. Asking too many questions about Chat Noir’s—

None of them were okay.

It was fine. They dealt with it. They had each other and self-help books and tiny gods.

“Hi,” Adrien said. “I was wondering if I could get one of the croissants with the strawberry jam?”

“Of course, dear,” Sabine said, with a gentle, tired smile on her face.

 _“She doesn’t look like I remember her,”_ Smol Adrien said.

**_Specifics?_ **

_“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her this tired. Or stressed. Usually she’s one of the nicest, happiest people I know. Content, that’s the word. She seems like she’s got more on her shoulders than Nathalie does.”_

**_Yeah, well, we talked about the crime rates. These numbers don’t exist in a vacuum._ **

_“I know that! I just… didn’t expect it to be affecting_ her _like that.”_

“Honey, can I get you anything else?”

“Oh!” Adrien said. He smiled, this time apologetically. “I’m sorry, I got lost in thought. How much do I owe you?”

She rattled off a number, and Adrien kept his smile fixed on his face as he paid.

Sabine hadn’t had him pay for his food in years. He was one of the family these days. He and Marinette had been joined at the hip for too long to be anything _but._

So, she definitely didn’t recognize him. The ‘dear’ and ‘honey’ were just her being a kind and polite hostess.

His eyes didn’t prickle at that, but his grip on the paper bag was perhaps a little tighter than was strictly necessary.

Adrien thanked her for the food and exited the shop, mulling on the situation. He ate the croissant as he sat on a bench in the park across the way, eyes on the balcony.

He only barely caught it when a girl exited the hatch and, crouching low to hide herself from all but the most prying of eyes, transformed in a flash of light.

His eyes narrowed, because that was the wrong color, but it was still a sign.

 _“Marinette has the Miraculous Box,”_ Younger Adrien reminded him. _“She’s got access to_ all _the kwami except Plagg, Nooroo, and Duusuu.”_

Adrien nodded slowly but didn’t comment.

Hopefully it just looked like he was spacing out, not creeping on a teenager.

…god, he hoped it didn’t look like he was creeping on a teenager.

Fuck. He was technically creeping on a teenager.

_“I think people would let it slide if they knew it was for hero-ing purposes and not, like, actually being a creep.”_

Fair, but still.

He wasn’t comfortable with this.

It was a few minutes before Marinette exited again, and detransformed, and then went inside again.

_“Do you feel like you know her?”_

**_She’s a stranger right now. Maybe I’ll talk to her and she’ll be similar enough to the Marinette I know that I can build a rapport, but right now, she’s_ not _the girl I know. She might be the girl_ you _know, and if we’re lucky, that’s exactly who she’ll be, and I can just let you do the talking when we see her. But she’s still a stranger to me until further notice._**

_“So the ‘creeping on a teenager thing’ is…”_

**_The surveillance is necessary but she’s a teenage girl and the underlying trends on that particular front are horrifying and I’m deeply uncomfortable with being even slightly close to doing the thing that I regularly fight people for doing._ **

Smoldrien was quiet after that.

(Adrien _really_ needed to settle on a nickname for this kid. Banana Noir wasn’t working out and all the other variants were either unwieldy as hell or bordering on the nicknames that Marinette and Kagami had turned into occasional kink games and, quite frankly, he didn’t want to touch that while he had a teenager in his head.)

(He didn’t want to touch that at _all.)_

He waited a few minutes, and then stretched and ducked away to a hidden spot. He transformed and, when the moment was right, flung himself up and over the little wall of the balcony and landed on Marinette’s roof with as light a tread as he could.

_“What now?”_

Adrien shrugged. “We knock.”

He did just that.

He waited a moment, but didn’t hear any answer. “Marinette? Marinette Dupain-Cheng?”

“Who are you?” A familiar voice called back, challenging and brash.

 _“That’s Ladybug,”_ Smoldrien informed him, just to confirm what he’d already guessed.

Adrien opened the trapdoor and lowered his head in, all the blood rushing with the pull of gravity. He smiled at two figures that pinged as very, _very_ familiar to his little stowaway, and said the words his younger self fed him.

“Chloé. Bugaboo. Glad I’m not the only one stuck in this mess. Any idea what’s going on?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can probably spot the bits where I was influenced by recently rereading the Inimitable series by deniigiq.  
> Also for the record: Adrien's obliviousness on some stuff is based on my own at that age. Fifteen-year-old me did not know what a brothel was. Adrien probably knows more than I did, but mostly because he watches more anime than I did.
> 
> Marinette POV: I am SO TIRED and have ALL THE RESPONSIBILITY
> 
> Chloe POV: I'm FILLED with SELF-HATRED and PARANOIA
> 
> Adrien POV: I'm TWENTY-FIVE and there is a TEENAGER asking me what a BROTHEL is


	6. Time to Sit Down and TALK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our main characters finally all get together and talk things out.
> 
> Except CV. Because she's scary. She's not invited yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: discussion of PTSD, mentions of the implications of a grown man visiting a teen's bedroom (you already know the context, it's safe), discussion of the variety of crimes that CV and older!Chat and Riposte handle, including but not limited to mentions of rape, human trafficking, drug dealing, coerced sex work, and the mob. Also some VERY long dialogue-only paragraphs, but hopefully it works as a stylistic thing. It's an infodump but I *think* it works.

Adrien grinned, just a little nervously. Ladybug looked ready to kick his ass or die trying, and Chloé looked… not well.

_“She’s been in a bad place since the whole thing with Miracle Queen.”_

Noted.

“Truce?” Adrien asked. “I’m here to help, promise.”

“Prove it,” Ladybug challenged, and Adrien… wasn’t sure where to take that.

MiniChat was, though, and slid forward smoothly to take the lead. “Aw, come on, Bugaboo. I know I look a bit different, but I didn’t think that’d be enough to make you not recognize me.”

“Proof,” Ladybug repeated, voice like steel.

Adrien felt his face twitch, and then— “Three kisses. I remember none of them. You remember two.”

“Still not good enough,” Ladybug insisted. Right. Alya probably had all three on video.

“Master Fu told us that we figured out each other’s identities during Oblivio, but neither of us remembered it,” MiniChat continued, with slightly growing desperation. Something—something to—

“Conjecture.” She didn’t even hesitate.

“Chat Blanc!” MiniChat blurts out. “You still won’t tell me why or how it happened, or the details, but Bunnyx took you to a future where I got akumatized while I was already transformed, and you said I blew up the moon.”

Ladybug’s yoyo stopped spinning. She narrowed her eyes.

“Which akuma did we detransform during, without opening our eyes?” She asked.

“Dark Owl, in the shipping crate,” MiniChat said.

Ladybug straightened, glanced at Chloé, and set her yoyo to her hip. “Lock the door behind you.”

“Sure thing,” Adrien said, flipping into the room and doing his best to _not_ land on Marinette’s bed in his dirty boots.

Ladybug crossed her arms, eyes hard. “How do you know where I live?”

“Well, I’ve been doing this for ten years,” Adrien told her. “And I we never had a Hawk Moth to deal with until now, so… you know. We decided the risks were worth it and didn’t look back.”

“Crimson Vision,” Ladybug said. “She’s your Ladybug.”

“She has our world’s Tikki,” Adrien confirmed.

“Hm.” Ladybug stared him down a moment longer, and Adrien idly wondered if he was _actually_ intimidated by a teenager, just feeling the echoes of CV, or feeling a fake sort of fear born of pity because…

Well, he remembered being a teenager. It was hard when nobody took you seriously.

“I could detransform if that would suit you better?” he offered. “Exchange of identities, since I kind of exposed you to mini-me by coming here.”

She hesitated.

 _She’s really insistent about the secret identities,_ Smoldrien offered.

Made sense.

Ladybug firmed up and nodded.

“Plagg, Claws in!”

A flash of green light, and he was back to normal. Plagg spun off into Adrien’s jacket, something he only barely noticed, mostly because—

“Adrikins!”

_Oof._

Chloé slammed into his gut in a hug, tiny and weighing basically nothing, and he hugged her back on instinct. She reached barely halfway up his chest, and his brain struggled to process what just happened.

Ladybug was staring at him in horror. “Adrien?”

Wow, her voice was squeaky.

The horror wasn’t great.

Smoldrien was having Complicated Emotions in the back of his head, but Chloé was crying into his chest right now so that probably took precedence. He rubbed her back and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Help?” he said in Ladybug’s general direction after a moment. “How did she…”

She swallowed visibly, and gathered herself. The horror was a little buried. “She remembers both timelines, and the fused one. There’s an older version of her in her head. You said there was a younger version of you in yours?”

“Yeah,” Adrien said. “Er, can I assume that Alya and Nino and all them are in your class at school? Because they kind of disappeared from my phone.”

Ladybug nodded slowly. “They don’t remember you.”

Adrien grimaced. “Kinda figured. Kagami doesn’t remember any of them exist, so… makes sense it would go the other way around.”

“Riposte,” Ladybug muttered. “Chloé did the research. So we can probably assume everyone we can’t find in our age group is somewhere in yours?”

“Probably.”

Chloé pulled away from him—finally—and rubbed at her eyes. “Does this mean you know where Lila is?”

Ah. Fuck.

“She’s not in your class?” Adrien asked, and then hesitantly said, “Well, if we’re lucky, then her family decided to stay in Italy instead of coming to the mess that is Paris.”

“And if we’re not?” Ladybug asked.

“Plotting her revenge against my world’s Marinette for getting her shut up in prison,” Adrien said, wincing a little as his voice rose in pitch until it was more of a question than a statement.

Both teenagers gaped at him.

“What did she… do?” Chloé asked carefully.

“Mostly white-collar crime,” Adrien said. He looked away at the walls. They were very pink. “Embezzlement. Identity fraud. Libel. A bit of smuggling and bribery. She hit the wrong people, though, got caught up in some corporate audits and got sued to the moon and back. The corporate world isn’t happy with her, and neither is the criminal. She blames Marinette.”

“Marinette or CV?” Chloé asked sharply.

“Marinette,” Adrien said. “But yeah, if we can get this space-time knot unraveled quick enough, you won’t have to worry about any of that. She’s safer in prison anyway, and mini-me said we’d know if things were _really_ bad because some hero called Bunnyx would have shown up.”

Both girls stared at him.

Ladybug buried her face in her hands.

“Great, we finally get an adult and he’s _useless,”_ Chloé muttered.

“Wh—rude!”

“Is it?” She challenged.

“Yes!” He insisted.

“Enough!” Ladybug snapped. “Fluff is sick. So is Sass. We don’t know that Bunnyx _can_ come, so we have to assume she can’t.”

Oh. “Well… shit.”

Ladybug sat down on the chaise and suddenly looked far, far more tired than any kid her age had a right to be. “Yeah. So we have to figure it out without Bunnyx. Chloé and I are the only ones that remember our timeline. Chloé remembers both, and the mixed one. I don’t remember the one where I’m an adult, but if there’s an older me running around with a miraculous, then I’m guessing there’s a reason for that.”

Adrien blinked and looked at Chloé. “You remember the mixed timeline?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You… don’t?”

“Uh, no,” he said.

Smoldrien mentally squirmed.

“Okay,” Adrien said after a moment. “So, you’re the first point of contact on figuring out the differences between the timelines and what we’re living in right now, since you can just think of the answer instead of running research. I’m keeping CV away from this problem for now, so you don’t have to worry about her for a bit. Um—”

“Why would we have to worry about her?” Ladybug asked. Demanded, really, but…

Adrien’s brain stalled out. He thought about how his Marinette, sweet as she was at her day job, had recently scared a teenage boy into literally crapping his pants in a deserted alleyway to get information on a drug dealer that was lacing his stuff for reasons they hadn’t figured out yet.

“She’s not great with kids,” he said after a moment. “Not when she’s suited up.”

“I’m not going to be _scared_ of an older me. I’ve fought way too many akuma to be scared of anything!”

Adrien remembered the echo of breaking fingers from a few nights ago. Not a teenager that time—college student that had been roofieing girls in a bar—but still. The screaming had echoed more, but the bones tended to stick out in his memory.

“Yeah, no, just trust me that it’s better if we don’t get her involved with you two yet.”

 _”Your girlfriend is scary,_ Smoldrien told him. _Is… is_ my _world’s Marinette going to grow up like that?”_

**_I really hope not. To be fair, the problems you two are dealing with are_ way _different from my world._**

“Did you already talk to her?” Ladybug asked.

“Yeah. I asked her to refrain from looking into stuff like your friends and parents because I’m _pretty_ sure only the one set exists and they won’t remember the older Mari, so that’s just… a mess and a half,” Adrien said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “She agreed, and we both thought it would be good if she looked into the Hawk Moth situation. Mini-me says you guys still don’t have a solid lead on him or, uh—”

_“Mayura.”_

“—Mayura, apparently? But Mari—uh, CV, she’s good at connecting the dots on stuff like this. Could have been a pretty good private detective if she hadn’t wanted to go into fashion.” He ended the sentence with a laugh and looked away.

“That’s goo—Chloé, what the heck?!” Ladybug yelped.

Adrien felt that this was not a terrible reaction, but perhaps a little overblown since Chloé was grabbing at _Adrien’s_ hand, and getting up in his business, not Ladybug’s.

 _“She’s used to Chloé doing it to her, though,”_ Smoldrien pointed out.

Cool! Not helping.

“What the fuck,” Chloé said.

“Feel kinda like I should be the one saying that,” Adrien said, trying to keep it as mild as possible.

“You only have one ring,” Chloé accused.

“Um… yeah?”

“But both Ladybugs still have their earrings.”

“Er, well, yeah,” Adrien said.

“So where’s the other cat ring?” Chloé asked. “You—we know where all of _our_ dimension’s miraculous are, right? All the kwami? So where’s the ring?”

“Well, I can’t speak for the ring, but—” Adrien paused and lifted his jacket, shooing out the two Plaggs. “You don’t have to worry about a missing kwami.”

Ladybug stared at them, pale as a ghost.

“You okay?”

“Spots off.”

Tikki spiraled out from the earrings, and looked around with the kind of dawning horror only possible on a tiny god.

“Sugarcube!” one of the Plaggs yelled, zooming straight for her and eliciting a small squeak as they collided.

“That’s bad,” Ladybug—no. Mini Marinette? Minimari? Too many syllables, but he’d work with it for now. MiniMari said. “The rings, what, fused? That’s not—that’s not how it’s supposed to _work.”_

“You’d know?”

“It’s my _job_ now,” MiniMari hissed, hands in her hair and almost clawing at her scalp. “That’s—”

“Okay, no, stop hurting yourself,” Adrien said with a sigh, taking her hands and pulling them away from her head. “There are healthier ways to deal with that.”

She gaped up at him.

“He’s right, you know,” Chloé said, and glared when MiniMari shot her a look. “What? I told you, I’ve been doing the whole therapy thing, okay, I’m learning about all the healthy coping mechanisms and stuff.”

Adrien shrugged when MiniMari looked at him. “I had to stop going to therapy after I got to the point where my life was full of too much Chat shit to deal with my problems with a psych, but I read a _lot_ of self-help books and articles about this sort of thing.”

Adrien let go of her hands, and Chloé threw one of the stuffed animals from the chaise at MiniMari’s head. The girl caught it without looking.

“Squeeze that instead,” Chloé said.

MiniMari stared at her in unabashed confusion.

Honestly, there was a _lot_ of staring today. Adrien wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

 _“You could try to break the tension,”_ Smoldrien pointed out. _“You love puns as much as I do.”_

That was far and away _not_ the problem here.

“Okay,” Adrien said. “So… Mini-Me says that this is probably an akuma’s fault, then?”

MiniMari made a face, fingers curling like claws into the fluffy unicorn in her grasp. “Might be. I’d want more information on the Miraculous in your dimension, first. If _your_ Fluff or Sass got picked up by someone who decided to do something questionable with it, it would explain a lot.”

Adrien shook his head. “All the Miraculous were lost almost two hundred years ago except Ladybug, Black Cat, and Turtle.”

MiniMari grimaced. “Great. We’ll leave that as a maybe, then? There _is_ an active Hawk Moth here, but we don’t know if it’s our Hawk Moth, who remembers the original timeline, or a new one that found _your_ dimension’s Nooroo, or maybe our Hawk Moth _doesn’t_ remember and just woke up with Nooroo and decided to be evil _anyway,_ or—”

“Breathe,” Adrien said, because MiniMari looked like she was seconds away from—

Well, he wasn’t sure, because when _his_ Marinette got like this, she hit a point where she just stopped talking and got out the corkboards and started pinning things to walls, and sometimes lassoed him into helping her pin things to the ceiling if it was _really_ complicated, because she hadn’t inherited her dad’s height in the slightest.

“Do you have any corkboards?” he asked.

“What?”

“You know, somewhere you can pin things so you can visualize what’s happening,” he said.

Better to externalize the anxiety in a helpful way, right?

“I think she’s right,” a familiar, high-pitched voice said. The knot in Adrien’s stomach loosened as he remembered that yes, there was, in fact, a Tikki here. “The fact that the rings fused is a bad sign, but the fact that we don’t know what version of Hawk Moth is sending the akuma is probably the bigger worry right now.”

Actually, no, the knot was back. Thanks a lot, Tikki.

“We could prioritize splitting you guys,” MiniMari muttered. “Into the adult and the teenager, I mean. I don’t think either of you are actually enjoying this, right?”

“I’ve definitely been better,” Adrien said.

_“Rude!”_

**_Kid… I want to kiss my girlfriend without having to worry about shoving you into a sexual situation you are in no way able to consent to on account of being a teenager._ **

_“That’s fair but also, rude.”_

“I’m fine, actually,” Chloé said, in a voice that was far too small and hesitant for Adrien’s tastes.

Hm. He didn’t want to think about that any more than he had to. Older Chloé could handle it.

_“Maybe that’s what she meant.”_

Oh. That made a lot of sense. It was also somewhat uncomfortable to think about. Adrien wasn’t doing that for Smoldrien.

_“I don’t need therapy as much as she does.”_

Oh honey, no. No, Adrien had thought the same thing, and then he’d grown up and realized that his childhood had been _profoundly_ fucked up and required _so much_ therapy.

All the therapy.

And then it kind of stopped helping because he couldn’t share the Chat Noir stuff, but still.

 _“It wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t_ that _bad.”_

**_I’m sure Chloé would have said her childhood was amazing, if you’d asked her before whatever happened. She probably even believed it._ **

Smoldrien didn’t have an answer for that.

“I don’t even know the _first thing_ about how to go about splitting you back into two people,” MiniMari whined, clutching the stuffed animal so close to her chest that Adrien wondered if it was going to burst.

“So don’t focus on that first,” Chloé said, voice dry. Wow, that was a quick turnaround. Compartmentalization? Or maybe the older Chloé had just taken over.

 _“Probably the second,”_ Smoldrien said.

“What are you talking about?” MiniMari asked.

Chloé shrugged. “Your whole big thing is solving the akuma using a lucky charm that doesn’t make sense to anyone but you. You can’t just _untangle_ a magical dilemma none of us understand, so start with what you do: akumas and miraculous. If there’s a quick answer to this whole problem, it’s going to lie with an akuma, right?”

“Not necessarily,” MiniMari said. “But… probably?”

“So we find the akuma,” Chloé asserted, like it really was just that easy. “Or at least figure out what it _did._ The key to fixing something that’s broken is understanding how it broke in the first place, yeah?”

MiniMari furrowed her brow and looked closer. “Am I talking to Queenie right now?”

Chloé smirked. “Sure as the sun doth shine, kid.”

MiniMari leaned away, eyes widening a little.

“Uh… is Queenie what we’re calling the older Chloé, then?” Adrien asked.

“Yes,” Chloé— _Queenie—_ said with that same smirk. “If you want to differentiate, I’m calling the younger one Little Bee.”

_“That’s cute.”_

“I’m been referring to teenage me as Smoldrien,” Adrien admitted. “Tried some other stuff, but everything is weird or too many syllables. Like the banana thing.”

MiniMari groaned and put her face in her hands. Chloé looked at her, and then back at Adrien. “Do I want to know?”

“There was a banana suit, apparently,” Adrien said.

Chloé blinked at him, slowly, and then shrugged. “Whatever. Not my problem.”

“And what _is_ your problem?” Adrien asked.

“Project managing Little Miss Anxiety Attack here,” Chloé said, clapping a hand on MiniMari’s shoulder. “You’ve got an actual adult life, so I’m thinking that if this takes more than a day or two, I’m going to end up being the person spending the most time with Ladybug here, and while I’ve seen her in action as Ladybug, I’ve also got my own mini-me feeding me memories of—just— _so_ many anxiety spirals in civilian form. We caused like half of them, I think, so Little Bee _definitely_ wasn’t trusted enough to be close enough to catch more than the edges, but it’s still, like, totally a thing I can recognize, you know? And let’s be real: you’re a theoretical physicist, Adrikins. We both know your entire wing of that university is as easily distracted as a squirrel.”

“I know how to hold a schedule, Chloé,” Adrien said, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

She arched a brow at him, and turned her face just far enough away from MiniMari that the girl would have her view obstructed by painstakingly-styled blonde hair. “Do we?”

Her eyes flicked over towards MiniMari, hidden by the bang she’d positioned so carefully, and then back on Adrien. The expression on her face was hard despite her light tone, begging him to understand what the hell she was getting at.

Which… he did. It wasn’t about scientists being distractible or the autism or Queenie not thinking he could handle something like this.

It was about the fact that he was a grown-ass man in a teenage girl’s room, and that was already super weird before throwing in all the _other_ parts to this equation.

“I’ll stick to CV and Riposte, then,” he said, still flat. “They get a little stabby when they get something in their sights, and I think Hawk Moth piqued some interest for them. Anything you kids need me for before I ditch?”

“There’s one other thing I wanted to split the rings apart for, at least,” MiniMari muttered. “Ladybug needs backup, especially in this… weird, unfamiliar Paris. And that’s usually a Black Cat.”

“What would you have done if you could split the rings but not the people?” Adrien asked.

MiniMari inclined her head to Chloé. “Already got one secret-keeper, don’t I?”

“I’m… going to let Little Bee have control back,” Queenie said, and the casual confidence slipped away in favor of a guarded bravado.

Little Bee spun to look at MiniMari. “You want _me_ to go out with you?”

“I mean, I was considering it,” MiniMari said. “You’re the only one who remembers that isn’t already an active superhero.”

“But—you’re not worried about me, oh, I don’t know, _betraying_ you again?”

“There’s grown-ups this time,” MiniMari said, with a short glance in Adrien’s direction.

He didn’t volunteer for this.

_“I’ll annoy you if you don’t.”_

**_Dammit kid, I’d still_ do _it, I just don’t like being volunteered for it against my will by a girl that’s a third of my size._**

_“She’s not that short.”_

**_I’m talking mass._ **

_“She’s still not_ that _much smaller than you, unless you somehow got some density-shifting going on.”_

**_You’re really annoying, you know that?_ **

_“Methinks you’re just not used to someone pointing out your rounding off is exaggerated to the point of uselessness.”_

Good to know the classic Chat snark was still entrenched.

Chloé’s hand drifted up to the comb in her hair, something Adrien only processed was a miraculous after Smoldrien pushed it into his head.

“It’s a risk,” MiniMari said, and Chloé flinched like she’d just been smacked.

“You _said—”_

“Hawk Moth _knows who you are,”_ MiniMari snapped. “You _know_ the risk. It’s higher than before. If this Hawk Moth remembers the timeline I do, then he _knows who you are, Chloé.”_

Chloé’s shone with what was probably some fresh tears.

_“We should—”_

**_Absolutely not._ **

“There _is_ one option,” MiniMari said. “Which is if Pollen can adjust the undercover look of the comb, and change your superhero outfit enough that you’re not recognizable as yourself, I can let you come along with me. If not, you’ll need a different miraculous, and most of them are _pretty unhappy_ with you.”

This really _would_ have been easier with a spare Cat ring, huh?

**_Kid? Why are they unhappy with her?_ **

_“…Miracle Queen.”_

**_You keep mentioning it, but I still don’t know what happened._ **

_“You don’t want to.”_

Well, that was… something.

“Can… can I have a moment? Alone? With Pollen?” Chloé asked.

MiniMari watched her for a moment, lips pursed, and then nodded sharply. “Adrien, on the roof. Tikki, Spots On!”

Adrien ignored the fact that he could _feel_ the stifled, adoring squealing of the kid in his head, and followed suit. He bounced off the railing at Marinette’s bed and followed her out the trapdoor in the ceiling.

She closed the door behind them, giving Chloé and Pollen the privacy they needed.

Adrien went and sat down at the wall, low enough that nobody would be able to _tell_ he was hiding out on a teenager’s balcony if they happened to look up. He arranged himself to be comfortable, knee up high enough to rest an arm on it, just Chilling.

“So,” Ladybug said, sitting down on the nearest chair and leaning forward in a way that looked more nervous than anything. “You… are an older version of the Adrien I know, then.”

Adrien wiggled a hand. “Kind of. We had some reasonably different formative experiences. I never went to public school until university, for one thing, and no akumas, generally more street-level and institutional and systemic crimes, that sort of thing. But for the most part, yeah, I’m an older, different version of the Adrien Agreste you know.”

Ladybug nodded, refusing to meet his eyes. “And… you know the older me.”

“Er… yes,” Adrien said. He did not follow with ‘I thought we established that,’ because Ladybug was clearly building up to something, but it rested heavy on his mind.

_“You’re mean.”_

**_I literally_ just _made a decision specifically geared towards_ not _being mean._**

_“You still thought it.”_

**_Actions matter more than thoughts do. I can be an asshole in my head, but putting in the effort to_ not behave like an asshole _is the important part._**

Smoldrien grumbled at that.

“So… am I… um, am I really that… _bad?”_ Ladybug asked. She still didn’t meet his eyes. “I mean, everyone talks about Crimson Vision like she’s terrifying, and you said she’s ‘stabby,’ and… she doesn’t _sound_ like a good person. And I know I make mistakes, but I _try_ to be good, and she sounds like she’s actively trying to be… just… horrible.”

Adrien pursed his lips. He looked up and back, and watched the clouds scudding across the sky. “It’s complicated.”

She didn’t make a sound.

“The Marinette I know is… we started out a lot like you, young and relatively innocent. Naïve, really. Kids. But the monsters we fight aren’t decent, normal people who got caught up by a supervillain’s mind control. The monsters we fight are _human._ Some have superpowers, but mostly they’re just horrible people who decided that the money is good, so why not kill a few people, or sell a few kids, or trick some teenagers into getting addicted to something they wouldn’t touch if they knew what was going on.

“When you fight _that_ kind of monster, it leaves scars. Psychological ones. We had to get rough and mean and scary in order to make any changes at all. I do my best to use the money I have to make changes on a societal level—I donate to homeless shelters and rehab clinics and after-school programs for at-risk youth—but these things need to be tackled on _every_ level. I can’t wait for a political or systemic change to be implemented through all the bribes and backroom deals. Some things need to be dealt with _immediately._ And that means we have to get into the meat of the situation and scare the bigwigs into behaving.

“Marinette got mean because we _had_ to be. Being nice doesn’t _work_ when the person you’re fighting doesn’t have a moral compass to speak of. We get drug addicts to rehab, and scare drug dealers on street corners into new directions if we can, but the head of the drug ring doesn’t care. He’s not here because he got in a bad situation and this was the only way out. He’s here for the cash, and we can’t _offer_ a way out when he doesn’t _want_ one. We talk to the girls at the brothels in secret to figure out if they’re there because they want to be or because they have to be. Some houses are decent, the Madames are just filling a niche and providing employment, and even if it’s illegal, we’ll turn a blind eye if everyone’s consenting and is provided with health support and security. Some of them are forcing the girls into it, drugging or blackmailing them, coercion through violence, and _those_ are the ones we do our best to break up. We try to get the girls over to—there’s a handful of unskilled or entry-level places in the city that are always looking for more hands, warehouses and small factories, dishwashing or laundry or clothing repairs.

“It’s not a great system, but… we try. We _really_ try to get to a good end for everyone, but the number of victims we see isn’t really something we can ever get over. And it changes us. Marinette ended up going bad cop and I got to stick with… not good cop, exactly, but less outright threatening. Kagami joined her on the bad cop side, because she’s better at scary than either of us.

“Eventually, in a world like this, a _city_ like this, you have to learn to compartmentalize. We’re heroes, or at least trying to be. We can’t ignore the bad things. We don’t have that option. So you learn to split things up, to figure out the best mask for the situation. Not physical masks, like the ones we wear, but the… personality, I guess. Marinette’s a sweetheart when we’re not in costume. She does volunteer work teaching kids to sew in some after-school programs at community centers, the kind of thing where they want to give the kids something to do in case they have parents working long hours and are too young to be trusted alone at home. She’s the nicest, kindest, most hard-working person I know, but she shuts _all_ of that down when it’s time to be CV. We don’t have room to be nice to mob bosses and hired killers and rapists, so we put on the masks, physical and psychological, and we get mean, because if we don’t, we’ll go right back to where we were when we started doing this, and I’m going to end up throwing up from the nightmares and she’s going to end up sending herself to the hospital from the stress again.”

He heaved a sigh. It wasn’t something he talked about a whole lot. Marinette and Kagami had lived the entire process _with_ him, and there wasn’t anyone else in his life that he both trusted enough to share that info with, and trusted could _take care of themselves_ if something went horribly wrong.

Ladybug was still quiet. Smoldrien was also quiet. The Plagg floating a few feet away? Quiet.

“So, no. I don’t think you’ll end up like the Marinette I know, because your world is so, so much kinder than ours is. You probably won’t need to get mean the way we did, and that’s a good thing. Please, _please_ never go down our path. It’s a terrible one and everything about it sucks.”

She giggled, and Adrien finally dropped his head to smile at her, though he could feel just how tight and sickly it was. It definitely didn’t reach his eyes.

“That makes me feel a little better,” Ladybug admitted. “I mean, um, it—it’s terrible! For you! And, uh, older me! But it does make sense that I won’t be like that, and it makes me feel better about her because, uh, the way you described her! Yeah, it’s, uh, kind of really sweet? Like it makes her seem more like a real person, instead of, you know, some scary antihero that stalks the night, like Batman, or Daredevil, or, uh…”

“Punisher?” Adrien prompted. “If we’re talking unnecessarily violent heroes who crush the heads of the scum of the earth, then Frank Castle’s pretty far up there.”

“I… don’t know who that is?”

“Fair.”

Adrien closed his eyes and tilted his head back again, taking in the sun while he could.

_“You don’t get a lot of chances to relax, huh?”_

**_No, I really don’t._ **

“So—” MiniMari started, and Adrien very deliberately _did not groan_ in irritation.

It was a near thing, but he didn’t do it.

“You—you have the Adrien I know. In your head. Like Chloé has her older self.”

“Yeah.”

Adrien lifted his head and found MiniMari avoiding his gaze again.

“Is, um… is Adrien—the one I know—is he, uh, disappointed? That it’s me?”

Adrien stared at her for a long moment.

_“I’m definitely not disappointed!”_

“I think literally the _only_ thing that could have disappointed him was Ladybug being Chloé,” Adrien said blankly. “And that wasn’t an option anymore, so no.”

“Oh,” MiniMari said. She didn’t sound super happy about that.

“Also I’m getting some thoughts from him about how he thinks you should be disappointed in _him_ because of, uh… Aspik? I’m getting something about a snake and time travel and he’s not elaborating and—nope! No, no, no, stop _right_ there.”

MiniMari shut her mouth.

“This? This is _not_ a conversation I should be involved in,” Adrien stressed. “I’m an adult man that barely knows you two. I know a _version_ of you, and I’m sort of the same person as mini-me, but I’m _not_ getting involved in this. I’m not playing messenger. I do _not_ belong in this situation and I want you to understand that. The _only_ people that should be having this conversation are the two of you, with—and I say this with reservation—possibly your kwami. This is a realization and conversation you should have been able to have in private. It is _deeply_ personal and I’m sorry you couldn’t have it the way it should have happened.”

She stared at him, mouth slightly open, and then her teeth clicked as she shut it. She nodded, lips pressed firmly together and eyes suspiciously wet, and Adrien did his best to ignore the roiling mix of confused feelings coming from the teenager in the back of his head.

Ugh, he was _so_ not cut out for this.

“So… yeah,” Adrien said brightly. “Should we check on Chloé? We should check on Chloé.”

“Wait,” MiniMari said. “Uh… close your eyes.”

“…why?”

She pinked a bit. “Security reasons.”

He raised an eyebrow, and then shrugged. “Fine.”

He waited, listening to the vaguely familiar sound of someone removing something from their weapon’s carry-space, and tried not to wonder about what it was.

High-pitched voices whispered for a moment, and then MiniMari said, “Okay. You can open your eyes now.”

Adrien opened his eyes, and saw a small swarm of—Kwami.

“Claws in.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr! I'm phoenixyfriend on there too.


End file.
